The Forgotten
by gothicorca1895
Summary: What happens to the Other Mother's toys when she's finished playing with them? Movieverse.
1. Dreaming

_A/N -- The Other Wybie's become a popular writing subject, hasn't he? I take pride in knowing I was the first in a movement. (I was the first, right?) _

_This -- my first multi-chapter Other Wybie-centric fic -- is dedicated to everyone who's read and reviewed "Stitches" and "The Sacrafice."_

**_Disclaimer: I don't own Coraline etc. this chapter, I won't own them next chapter, and come the end of this fic I still won't own them. _**

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The room was enclosed by darkness, the kind of darkness that exists after you turn off the lights in your bedroom at night: not complete blackness, but enough to muffle shapes and make everything uncertain. A source of light glowed somewhere unseen, more otherworldly than any candle.

A twisted shadow slithered this way and that, rummaging around soundlessly. A silhouette albeit to a hand lifted, and something silver and thin glistened in the suffused light. The black shape headed for a far corner.

Hunkered down in the corner was a boy, hard to make out because of the dark clothes he was wearing. He was clearly frightened, yet he lifted his head as if trying to display a little bravery. He had brown curly hair and black button eyes.

In less than a second, the shadow was upon him. A cruel, dry, yet too human voice hissed, "Remember, you wear my eyes. You're mine. Obey now, because one chance is all you get. I don't want you to upset Coraline…"

The hand-shape lifted, and the silver object was revealed.

It was a needle.

---

Coraline Jones awoke with a gasp, her forehead drenched in chilled sweat. She had a few moments of blank confusion, listening to her heart pound, before she was fully able to grip reality.

The view of her room seemed to have shifted slightly. Gradually Coraline came to realize that, sometime during the night, she had completely turned around in bed, so that her head was at the edge and her feet up by the pillow.

Also up by the pillow was a scruffy black cat, who appeared to be quite comfortable.

"How'd you get in here?" Coraline demanded.

The cat coolly blinked its pale aqua eyes.

"Not talking, huh?"

The cat placed his paws on the pillow and stretched nonchalantly. Coraline sighed and attempted to swing her legs out of bed, but found herself thoroughly entangled in her comforter. She kicked herself free, dressed in a striped shirt and jeans, and headed downstairs.

It didn't seem to matter how many projects they finished; Coraline's parents were always busy working on something. Though she usually made futile attempts to attract their attention, on this morning she entered quietly and resolved to unobtrusively pour herself a bowl of cereal, without bothering her rapidly typing mother. The gesture wasn't out of courtesy, however. It was because Coraline was still puzzling over her dream.

It all seemed to boil down to two words: Other Wybie. Other Wybie, a copy of her real-life best friend. Other Wybie, who couldn't talk at all. Other Wybie, who wore black button eyes, the sign of the Other Mother, yet had tried to help her escape until the very end…

Other Wybie, whose clothes had been dangling limply from the flag pole outside of Other Bobinski's apartment – her last glimpse of him.

The moment she'd witnessed in her dream was an unfamiliar one. Never had Coraline seen the Other Mother confront the Other Wybie, nor had he ever expressed any outright fear of her. But something in her heart told her that what she'd seen had happened – she just hadn't noticed it on those nights a few weeks ago.

She hardly touched her cereal.

The morning sky was angry mauve, threatening storms. "Can I go outside for a while?" Coraline asked, rinsing out her bowl.

Her mother's eyes flickered from her screen for a microsecond. "Looks like rain out there," she mumbled.

"If it starts, I'll come right back in," promised Coraline.

"All right…"

The air carried the acrid taste of lightning. Coraline shoved her hands (clad in her special gloves) in her raincoat pockets and plodded on.

She'd barely gone ten steps before nearly tripping over something. Not something but someone, draped in charcoal gray and hunched over as he crawled along the dry, uneven ground.

Coraline stumbled, but caught herself at the last second. She ached an eyebrow and glared down at the boy who had become her best friend. "What the heck are you going, Wybie?"

Wybourne Lovat, more commonly known as Wybie, lifted his head. His curly brown hair was hidden by a skeleton mask sporting a periscope. "Oh, eh, hey Jonesy."

"What are you doing?" Coraline repeated.

Wybie's skeleton-gloved hand reached up to rub the back of his thin neck. "I'm, um, rescuing worms."

"Rescuing…_worms?_" For the first time, Coraline noticed the soil-filled cardboard box beside him.

"Yeah, you know how the worms come up to breathe after it rains, and they all get dried up in the sun? I'm going to save enough so that they don't become an endangered species."

"What about the banana slugs?" Coraline asked sarcastically.

Wybie wasn't paying attention enough to catch her mocking tone. "Nah, the banana slugs can fend for themselves. They're a lot tougher than the worms."

Coraline rolled her eyes. She would have slugged him, but she really didn't feel like bending down to reach his shoulder.

Without warning, the atmosphere around them changed. The electric taste grew sharper, more distinct, and the smell was now thick and damp. A rumble of thunder echoed boundlessly through the sky, like a mallet pounding on an enormous sheet of aluminum.

Wybie stood up, brushing clumps of earth from his coat. He scooped up his worm box and made a beeline to where his bike was propped up against the wall of the Pink Palace Apartments.

"Running away from the rain, Wyyyy-boorrrnnn?" teased Coraline, emphasizing the name he hated.

Wybie, hunched over as always, might have been wringing his hands together were it not for the worm box he still carried. His gaze was averted – he seldom seemed able to make eye contact. "Grandma'll kill be if I'm out here when it starts – "

Light flashed behind patches of the cloud cover, and one single lightning bolt zigzagged down like a crack in the sky. And it seemed that something indeed cracked, because just like that, it started pouring.

"…raining," Wybie finished. Water slid off of his mask and dripped from the edge. He pushed the contraption aside, then muttered, "Oh, crap."

"You're not gonna make it home, Wybie," observed Coraline smugly.

"I'm so dead," he groaned, swinging one leg over his bike.

"Why don't you hand over at my place until the rain lets up?" she suggested.

More thunder, more lightning.

"Yeah, I'd better," said Wybie hurriedly, abandoning the bike and the worm box as he and Coraline covered their heads and ran for the door.

Coraline remembered something. "Your cat got in here last night, Wybie."

They were now in the front hall, leaving their moistened coats and shoes by the entrance. Wybie added his mask to the pile. "He's still not my cat – and he tends to do that if you leave a window open."

"I didn't leave any windows open."

"Sure you didn't, Jonesy."

"I didn't!"

"Whatever." Wybie's eyes drifted nervously towards the phone. "Hey, listen, I'd better call Grandma and tell her where I am. Why don't you go get him and bring him down here?"

"Fine." Coraline marched upstairs, the creepy gist of the conversation fully processing: she didn't know how the cat had gotten in.

He was still curled up on her pillow, but he wasn't asleep. In fact, he seemed especially alert, as if he were guarding his place.

Coraline approached, giving him a scratch under the chin. "Hey, Wybie's downstairs. He wants you down there."

The cat sprang up, his back somewhat arched, bizarrely tense. His enormous eyes were staring at her intently. He was…trying to tell her something?

"Whatsa matter?"

He began to nudge the pillow with his head, gently at first, then harder. It toppled to the hardwood floor without a sound.

"What's your problem?" demanded Coraline, reaching down for the fallen pillow. She was about to set it back on the bed – when something made her muscles lock into place.

Gazing up at her from the starched bedsheets were two round black buttons.


	2. In the bed

_A/N: I suppose it's time for some review replies._

_In The Beginning: Thanks! It's in there because, as we all know, MY version of the story is the correct one. ;) No, I'm kidding. As for not being able to wait, I've got chapter two finished now, so wait no more!_

_BeyondxHatred: Wow, I'm flattered! Yes, I believe they're eleven. I always find it helpful to visualize them in my head, saying the dialogue. If it doesn't fit, well, back to the drawing board! I hope you can apply that to your stuck-up teenager issues. ;)_

_SilvaGirl: Indeed, because he is clearly the most awesome character on the face of the Coraline-induced Earth ever. And oh, those darn Word typos! We should just make a smarter, fanfiction-understanding computer._

_Thank you all for your feedback! This next chapter's for you!_

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"Find our eyes, miss, and our souls will be freed."

It was the last thing Coraline heard from the ghost children before she was taken from the mirror room. She hadn't noticed the pair of hands emerging from what appeared to be a solid stone wall – not until they snatched her beneath the arms. She felt for the second time the unusual sensation of passing through some other dimension. Then she was kicking and screaming, trying desperately to break free of this shrouded figure who was smothering her, choking her, pinning her down…

Coraline thudded abruptly to the ground, gasping for breath. She got up to her knees, prepared to face her pursuer, guessing it would be the Other Mother or one of her puppets. But no.

"Wybie?!" It was him, wasn't it? The Other Wybie. But it was difficult to tell, because his face was concealed by a colorful cloth.

Reassured, Coraline approached him, tugging the cover away. He cringed and shielded his face with his hands. Not fast enough, for she saw something, something he was trying to hide, something to make hearts wrench and stomachs lurch.

Slowly, disbelievingly, she brought the Other Wybie's arms away. His black button eyes held her gaze for only a second before he hung his head in shame. At first, Coraline wasn't able to react. Then feelings of pity, disgust, fear, were surging through her mind.

The Other Mother had stitched on her friend's face a horrible, repulsive smile.

---

"Jonesy! _Jonesy! _Hey, Coraline, wake up!"

And suddenly Coraline was awake once again, with the same throbbing heart and fast breaths of the previous night. She had flipped again, and was completely bound by her bedsheets. Wybie stood over her, hunched and hand-wringing as usual. In her mind's eye, he blurred with his button-eyed counterpart.

She blinked, and he returned to normal.

"The way you were thrashing around, I thought you were gonna fall on top of me," Wybie said nervously.

Coraline eyed the floor beside her bed. After the storm had begun, things had gone from bad to worse: the power out, the phone lines down. It had been fun at first. Despite Wybie's constant mutterings that his grandma would kill him (if she didn't murder him first), he had constructed a blanket fort with her, and in their hideout they'd pigged out on chips and cookies. Mr. and Mrs. Jones even joined in, what with their computers being dead.

But good feelings had vanished when the emergency backup radio had announced no letup in sight. Darkness fell, and Wybie was still unable to go home. He'd showered, brushed his teeth with a spare toothbrush, said he wouldn't mind sleeping in his clothes, then crawled into a borrowed sleeping bag. Between the storm, his snoring, and the weirdness of having her best friend spending the night, Coraline had thought she'd never get to sleep.

Evidently, she had.

"What time is it?" she yawned, rubbing her eyes.

Wybie shrugged. "I dunno, maybe one-thirty or so?"

"A.M.?!?"

"Uh, yeah."

Coraline exhaled roughly. Her room was dark, save the flashes of lightning still emanating from outside and the flickers of a few half-melted, lit candles on the fireplace mantle. She doubted she'd doze off again.

"Hey…" Wybie was poking around under her bed now.

Wiggling free of the blanket prison, Coraline stuck her head over the edge of the mattress. "Mind your own business, Wyy-boorrrnnn."

"Where'd these come from?"

He rose from his stooped position, and clutched in each hand was a black button. Coraline stiffened, realizing that though she'd remained in bed during her nightmare, the two items she'd decided to keep under her pillow hadn't been so lucky.

"These aren't, like, spy cams or anything?" asked Wybie. He examined both sides of the buttons, then answered his own question. "Nah, guess not." Grinning, he held them up in front of his eyes. "Check it out, Jonesy!"

And Coraline flipped out.

"DON'T DO THAT!!!" she shrieked, snatching the buttons back rather roughly. Wybie recoiled in shock, and his mouth dropped open with a barely audible, wet _pop!_

"Hey, what's your problem, Jonesy?" he demanded.

"Don't do that!" Coraline snapped again. "Don't _ever _do that!"

"I was just kidding!" he declared defensively.

"Well, don't!"

Silence.

Coraline tucked up her knees, seated on the bed with her back to Wybie. She opened her hands, and the two little circles of black plastic stared up blankly from her palms.

From behind her came an unintelligible, wordless mumble. She turned her head (a little scornfully) and glared at Wybie, who fidgeted like he was in the principal's office rather than his best friend's room.

"Listen, Jonesy," he stammered. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. If this is about the…" He trailed off, cleared his throat. "The you-know-what, than I…um…"

A dark shape moved beneath the bed, and who should emerge but the cat. He circled around Wybie's legs, then leapt up beside Coraline. She rubbed the top of his head absently.

"It's fine, Wybie," she sighed finally. "I guess I overreacted." _It's just that you reminded me too much of Other Wybie…_

Wybie looked relieved. "Maybe. Uh, thanks, Jonesy."

"No problem." Coraline lifted her pillow, prepared to hide the buttons once again. It took her a few seconds to notice the new addition.

"Oh my God."

"What's up, Jonesy?" Wybie peered over her shoulder.

Cautiously, as if it might explode, Coraline lifted the shard of broken glass with two fingers. It wasn't a plain piece of glass, either. Judging by its reflective surface, it was a fragment of a mirror. Like the mirror that had once been in the front hall, where she'd glimpsed her parents, which she'd smashed into pieces very similar to this…

Wybie didn't seem especially alarmed. "Huh. Wonder where that came from."

"From the same place as the buttons," murmured Coraline.

"Huh?"

"What?"

"_What _what?"

"Never mind." Coraline placed the mirror shard back where it had been before and set the buttons on top of it. Through pure chance of position, when she looked into the surface one last time, the image was of herself…with black buttons over her eyes.

Coraline pulled the pillow over the stash, as if smothering out the unwanted gifts that she didn't want to face.


	3. Trap for the mices

_A/N -- Update time! I got the chance to go see Coraline for the third time today, and I realize that the dialogue in the dream sequence isn't exactly matching. In my defense, it's a dream, so it could have been different than what actually happened._

_I also have quite a few reviews to respond to..._

_In The Beginning: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I wish I still had teeth to lose, cause now I want the Other Wybie under MY pillow!_

_BeyondxHatred: It's extremely amusing to watch my reviewers playing the what-will-be-under-Coraline's-pillow-next game._

_SilvaGirl: Yeah, I know. It's just more fun to do it this way. ;)_

_KellyKinsIsMINE: Of course you do. But better than ODATFF? As we discussed yesterday, we took ODATFF a bit too far, but still...(P.S. MAGIC SPIDERS!)_

_All other reviewers: Thanks for your positive comments and interest in this story! I hope this next chapter is everything you expected it to be!_

---

He held tight to her arm – the Other Wybie – and Coraline found herself stumbling after him through unfamiliar halls, halls that were shady, twisted parodies of her own home. He led her strait to the bug room. Her heart jumped into her throat, and a single, frantic question repeated in her mind: was the Other Mother still there?

No. The room was dark and vacant. A shaft of light from the crack of the open doors fell upon a heavy guard somewhere between a chiffarobe and an enormous insect. The Other Wybie fearlessly bounded up to it and shoved it to its side. Though Coraline placed her hands on it, she knew he'd done most of the work.

And there it was, her escape, her saving grace: the little door. Her companion yanked it open, revealing a gray cobwebbed tunnel littered with broken toys. He nudged her towards the opening, just as what sounded like a giant's footsteps pounded down upstairs.

"Come on!" Coraline hissed, making a grab for his sleeve.

"CORALINE! HOW DARE YOU DISOBEY YOUR MOTHER!" The enraged scream pierced the air.

The Other Wybie shoo his head in anguish, remorse glittering in his black button eyes. He tugged off his right glove; underneath was a hand-shaped clump of dust. The slightest puff of air escaped from between his lips, and it disintegrated, the tiny gray-brown particles drifting through the dark atmosphere.

Coraline's brows furrowed in confusion. What did he mean?

"_CORALINE!" _Another monstrous roar.

The Other Wybie shoved her into the passageway and slammed the door shut, and the blackness swallowed her.

---

The alarm had gone off at exactly the right time, 11:55 PM. That was the first thing Coraline noticed. The second thing she noticed was that she'd actually made it on to the floor this time, with the blanket cascading over the mattress and knotted around her legs. She kicked herself free and jumped up to shut the alarm off, so as not to wake her parents. That would ruin everything.

She crawled back up on her bed, draped the blanket over her shoulders cloak-style, and quickly lifted her pillow. Just the buttons and the mirror shard, nothing new. _Good, it hasn't happened yet._

11:56. Coraline lay very still, keeping her head turned towards the clock. 11:57. Was it really going to happen exactly at midnight? 11:58. That was what she was figuring, but what did she know, anyway? 11:59. She didn't feel sleepy, but she'd get awfully bored if she wound up waiting for an hour or something. 12:00 midnight –

Woah. What was that?

_Bump. Ba-bump._

There was something moving beneath her bed.

_Scritch. Creak._

Coraline burrowed underneath her blankets, her eyes fixated on the pillow. There was no doubt in her mind that this was what she'd been waiting for.

_Skrak skrak…skrak skrak. _It sounded like it was shimmying up the headboard, coming closer and closer still…

_Pad pad. _And her pillow appeared to bulge out.

Coraline held her breath and lashed out.

Her fingers dug into the sides of something warm and alive, something covered in fur. Muffled screeches and yowls resonated through the air; claws grazed her pajama top. Coraline struggled to hold the intruder down. For a moment they were locked in battle; but she, as the bigger person, won out.

"I knew it was you," she whispered fiercely.

A soft growl was her response.

"You got in last night and the night before," Coraline continued. "Why are you doing this, huh? Can you tell me?"

The cat glared at her and blinked his steely blue eyes. He carried something vaguely shiny and dark green in his mouth.

"Well?" Coraline's voice began to rise. She knew, of course, that the cat couldn't talk in this world, but she desperately wanted the mystery solved and over.

She received no reply, but the cat lowered his head and dropped the object on top of the bedsheets. Coraline reached out and took it. It was an item she never thought she'd see again: the stone with a hole in it.

"Where did you get this?" she hissed.

In response, the cat leaped nonchalantly from her bed and began to slowly walk out of her room.

"Hey!"

As the tip of his tail disappeared through the partly open door, Coraline realized that she had no time to lose. She stumbled around in her darkened room, grappling through her closet for her yellow rain boots, then fumbling as she tried to stuff her feet into them. Without pausing to search for her jacket, she was running, going quickly and (she hoped) quietly down the stairs.

The cat was back in her sight not long after she'd managed to make it outside; he was gaining speed, slipping through the undergrowth. A waning gibbous moon, shifting in and out of wispy gray clouds, made everything seem a sort of washed-out green. The ground was a pool of thick much coated by a thin, crumbly layer of grass and pebbles, all the work of yesterday's heavy rainstorms.

She crunched down on and awful lot of twigs as she pursued the cat – perhaps Wybie could give her a lesson on stalking? – but though he noticed, he never seemed to mind. It was almost like – the thought occurred to her suddenly – like he _wanted _her to follow him. And come to think of it…

His pace wasn't as brisk as it could have been.

The route he was taking was simple and direct.

He kept pausing, as if to make sure she was still there…

He was intentionally leading her somewhere.

And Coraline pressed on, even more curious now that she'd come to terms with the fact that her journey was pre-set. She forgot about her dreams, forgot about the things under her pillow, forgot about the Other Wybie. This was an adventure, and she might as well make the most of it.

After some time, the cat – and, subsequently, she – arrived at the old well. She held back as he sauntered up to it, circling it casually, sticking his nose down in the opening –

_Oh my God, who took the cover off the well?!_

Because the cover wasn't in place, like it should have been. It was laying, discarded, a few yards away. Coraline shuddered at the image of something silver, something spider-like, something glinting as it skittered over the edge…

She forced away the disturbing mental picture just in time to see the cat leap into the gaping void of the well's mouth.

Coraline gasped and seemed to turn to stone for a few seconds. She waited, expecting to hear a splash, a thud, a cry. But there was nothing. No sound anywhere. The entire world seemed to have gone mute.

Still debating what had just happened, she shivered, plodded home, put the stone under her pillow, and drifted into an uneasy sleep.


	4. Installation

_A/N -- Originally this chapter was going to be way, way, WAY longer, but after a suggestion from my IRL friend (undoubtedly the number one fan of this story) I realized that it'd do better as two seperate chapters. I still hadn't managed to wrap it up, which was making the interest factor go down, and besides, no one wants to read a bajillionmillion pages of text that drags on and on._

_That being said, review reply time!_

_In The Beginning: OMG YES HE IS. But you'd better not mention that to him. You know how cats are._

_TheOptimisticPessimist: Eleven, actually. And none of the above. This isn't meant to be a love story of any sort; that's why I didn't include any pairing warnings in the summary._

_Wybie: Finally, someone has seen through my chapter-naming ruse!!!!!!_

_MeiLei: Good. "Creepy" was exactly what I was going for._

_So, before you submit your chapter four reviews, ask yourself this: was it really worth the wait?_

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Two eyes down, one to go, and Coraline was scarcely able to believe in her success despite the intense adversities. Her suspicions caused her to ascend the steps to Other Bobinski's apartment with excessive caution. It would only get worse from now on.

As she drew closer, she spotted something dangling from the flagpole, flapping ever so slightly in an intangible breeze. At first, she assumed that it was a strip of drab fabric, but when she set foot on the balcony, its individual components became horrifically clear.

It was articles of clothing crudely stitched together: a charcoal gray coat, blue jeans rolled up at the cuffs, soft black leather shoes…

"Oh, Wybie…"

What had Coraline told the Other Wybie before he'd prompted her escape? "She'll just hurt you again!" The Other Mother had exceeded those expectations. She had obliterated him, completely erased the meager roots of his existence.

He had been her companion, her rescuer…her friend. And now he was gone forever.

Something hot and liquid formed in the corner of Coraline's eye, something that trickled down her cheek as she grabbed hold of the banister and screamed into the shadowed, specious world, "EVIL WITCH!!! I'M NOT SCARED!!!!!"

---

For once Coraline was not on the floor, nor was she cocooned by twisted blankets. Her right cheek, however, was slightly moist to the touch.

She cast aside her pillow and reexamined the three mysterious articles from the cat. Two black buttons, exactly like those haunting her sleeping thoughts. A sharp, triangular piece of the mirror once hanging at the end of the hall, which had acted as a window into her parents' prison. The stone with a hole in it, given to her by Misses Spink and Forcible, its solidness reassuringly real in her grasp.

_There has to be some kind of connection between my dreams and these three items. There just __**has **__to be._

Later that morning, she was startled when she received a phone call.

"Um, hello?"

"Hey, Jonesy!"

"Hey, Wybie." Coraline felt relief surge through her veins for unknown reasons. Who had she expected it to be?

"What's up over there?"

"Not much. How about over there?"

"I'm grounded for being out when the rain started and for spending the night inside the Pink Palace."

"Ouch. Sorry."

"Ah, don't worry about it."

There was a brief silence, during which Coraline's casual neutrality gave way to apprehension and dread as she recalled a detail of last night's exploration.

"Um, listen, Wybie, your cat – "

"Oh, don't worry about him either, Jonesy. He's in. Grandma says he was scratching at the front door at 12:30 in the morning, something like that."

"_What?!_"

"I said, the cat got in last -- "

"I heard what you said." And, as a result, something throbbed beneath her scalp, and the room was beginning to whirl. "It's just, um…never mind."

"So, um, Jonesy." Wybie's tone was abruptly subdued, and among the crackling hiss of background static, Coraline heard a door latch click into place. "Wanna meet me somewhere later?"

"I thought you were grounded."

She didn't need to see him in person to envision his daredevil smirk. "Grandma's going out to the Ashland Senior Center in half an hour."

Coraline rolled her eyes. "Wyy-bbooorrnnn, you are such a moron."

"Does that mean you won't meet me?" Wybie's voice feigned disappointment.

"Oh, I didn't say that." As suddenly as the downpour forty-eight hours prior, the bright lights of a brilliant idea were beating down her. "In fact, I'll be by the old well in forty-five minutes. I have something to show you."

"Sounds good to me, Jonesy. See you then."

"Bye."

She replaced the phone to its receiver, and it settled into its cradle with a satisfying _chink._ There was time to expend, time in which to construct her long, confusing explanation for Wybie.

But even though she knew that was what she _should_ have been doing, Coraline found herself sprawled across the length of her bed, toying with the artifacts spread over her pillow. As if by their own means, her hands arranged the buttons in formation over the mirror shard. She cold nearly hear the Other Mother's sugarsnap sweet voice crooning, "There's just one tiny little thing we need to do…"

"I'm not afraid," Coraline murmured. She pressed her stone against one eye. "I'll stare you down…stare you down with my real eyes…"

She glared back down at her button-eyed reflection.

And choked back a scream, because her image was no longer the one in the glass.

She was looking at the Other Wybie.

He was huddled in on himself, with his knees tucked up to his chest. He seemed sickly and stagnant; tremors crept over his limbs, and his limp brown curls dangled in front of his dull black button eyes. And he appeared weak, hardly able to hold up his trembling head.

"Wybie -- !" The name escaped Coraline's throat as a tight squeak. She reached out to the single fragment of the mirror, as if to provide some comfort to her friend, but her fingers only knocked against a cold, unyielding surface. She suddenly felt as if she was the trapped one, on the outside looking in, viewing him like a caged beast as he was hurting. Suffering.

Dying.

With a tremendous effort, Coraline tore the stone away from her eye, her breath coming in pants and gasps as though she'd just risen from underwater. She turned her attention towards the clock. Very little time had passed, but she didn't care. She had to get out – immediately.

She surveyed the contents of her threadbare pink messenger bag. A considerably dented, yet still functional, flashlight. A cardboard packet of filched matches. Hefty garden shears, accented by dark green plastic grips. The shattered remnants of a trio of marble-sized orbs. Coraline added the things she now regarded as treasures to the stash with the utmost care.

The half-full satchel provided a sort of comfortable imbalance, something she needed to tether her to this real world, to her own world. She did not recall what words of passing she mumbled to her parents before bolting into the revitalizingly crisp air.


	5. Let's go

_A/N -- What's this? I'm updating a day after the last chapter? I hope this doesn't spoil you guys, cause chapter six will be slow to come!_

_This was a hard chapter to write. Consistency blah, characterization blah, not that much action blah, all rolled up into one._

_As far as review replies go, I only need to talk to KellyKinsIsMINE, because you're not the one who made the suggestion. It was baileymermaid95. I'm glad you love my story, but she goes to my school, and OBSESSES over it._

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Coraline loped along slowly, decorating the moist soil with imprints of her rain boots in a two-by-two pattern. To fill the empty void of silence, she began to sing the song she had always believed to be a remedy for fear:

_Oh, my twitchy witchy girl,  
__I think you are so nice,  
__I give you bowls of sugar  
__And I give you bowls of ice  
__Cream…_

She trod around the garden, past tulips glittering with beads of rain, over the admirably disintegrating bridge, and started up the rift-riddled bluff.

I give you lots of kisses  
And I give you lots of hugs…

Her pace became even more delayed when the well was in her sight, with the abandoned cover concealed by ragged stems of crabgrass.

_But I never give you sandwiches  
__With greasy worms and mung…_

The final beans seemed to die away as the blaring pitch of a horn stabbed through the gray silence. Coraline didn't even flinch as the glorified bicycle came roaring down the incline, its passenger releasing joyous battle cries.

"If you don't shut up, Wyy-bbooorrnnn, your grandma'll here you from all the way downtown," she declared as he braked, mounds of mud mounting around his front tire.

"Cabin fever, Jonesy," Wybie replied as he removed his helmet. His pale brown locks bobbed in the breeze.

Coraline was unimpressed. "You haven't even been grounded for a day."

"So, uh, what'd you want to show me, Jonesy?" Wybie's gaze darted constantly towards the inky depths of the well, clearly not at ease with the absence of its cover. Perhaps he, as she had the previous day, was entertaining the notion of jointed needles wrapping over the edge, seeking revenge…

Coraline's own hand maneuvered through the contents of her bad and closed firmly around her treasures, around three little gifts that had seemed to reveal a window. "I'm being serious about this, Wybie, so you'd better hush up and listen."

"My lips are sealed," Wybie promised, twisting a nonexistent key into a nonexistent lock installed in his mouth.

She passed him the buttons, the mirror shard, and the stone.

"Hmm…" Wybie considered them. "What's the big deal? They're just things, Jonesy."

"The big deal is this." Coraline shuffled a short distance away from the well and crouched down on her knees. Wybie followed suit, and allowed his friend to arrange the "just things" into their previous formation. When she had completed the task, Coraline prepared to gaze through the stone once more, but found herself unable to. Half of her wanted to view the Other Wybie again, and be convinced that it was no illusion; the conflicting half was too afraid.

"You do it," she finally told Wybie.

"Um, sure, if it'll make you feel better…" He shrugged and lifted the stone. One hazel eye appeared to pierce through the hole, then flickered to the buttons settled over the mirror.

Apprehension, fluttering and pounding in her stomach and heart, wouldn't let Coraline survey his reaction. Instead, it forced her limbs to tuck up into a clenched ball, staring intently at her own raised knees.

"Are…are you sure…is this for real?" Wybie blurted suddenly.

Be strong, Coraline…

"I told you I was serious."

"Yeah…b-but…that's just freaky!"

"_Don't say that!!!"_

The stone somehow managed to escape Wybie's grasp, and he made no effort to reclaim it. Coraline stood and urged herself to be calm, to process this rationally, because she _needed _his help with this.

"I'm sorry, Wybie, but I _told _you what happened to him, and I _told _you everything he did for me. So don't talk about him that way. Got it?"

With the backlash of her outburst ringing in the atmosphere, the silent aftermath was not so very different from the one a few days ago.

"So…" Wybie gave a little gurgle that emanated from the back of his throat. "You think your friend is still out there somewhere…even though this Other Mother person – "

"As a matter of fact, I do," Coraline answered defensively.

"Then…well, where would he be, if that was true?"

"_If_?"

"How do you even know he _is _still alive?"

In the border of the trees around the clearing, leaf litter crackled, and low shrubs' branches rubbed together. The cat slipped between the boughs and nonchalantly padded over to them.

Coraline reached down and scooped him up, then extended him at arm's length. "You know where he is, don't you?"

The lids shut and opened over his icy eyes.

"Okay, seriously, Jonesy." Wybie appeared about ready to hit and run. "You're creeping me out now! And why do you always talk to my cat?!"

"Because he knows things," Coraline said stiffly. "He was the one who gave me that stuff. And now he's going to show me how to get back to the other you."

"Uh…"

The cat impatiently looped about their legs, striving for attention. When every human eye was trained on him, he sprinted forward…

…and for the second time, entered the well.

Coraline released her conserved breath.

"You – you crazy cat!" Wybie spluttered, racing to the edge. Coraline sank her fingers into the fabric of his jacket, preventing him from reaching his goal.

"You can't go down by yourself," she declared, not anticipating her own unnatural calm.

"Go…down?" Judging by the expression his face twisted into, the idea of entering the dank hole had never occurred to him.

"Of course." Coraline's voice still maintained its steadiness, as if she was explaining a plainly logical strategy. "You want to get your cat back, don't you?"

"Um…"

"Besides, he does want us to follow him. There's something down there that we should see, I'm sure of that."

"Well…"

The toes of her boots inched towards the edge, and Coraline stared, genuinely without fear, into the abyss. She recalled the cat's extensive knowledge of doorways and portals, and knew that the reasons for his descent were a far cry from suicidal.

"You don't have to come with me, you know," she said softly. "I'll go by myself, if I have to. But I'm definitely going."

Wybie gave his bewildered head a slow shake. "You're not making any sense, Jonesy."

Coraline didn't answer. The well's blackness seemed to magnify infinitely, rear up and consume her entire line of vision.

Wybie's feet crunched over the brittle glass. It was several seconds before she noticed that he had taken position by her side.

"I guess I'll just have to see if for myself," he finished wryly.

She was unable to prevent the grin from spreading, a crack in the smooth façade of her apparent neutrality.

"Great to have you along, Wyy-booorrnnn. Now hold my hand."

"Hold your…what?!" Pallor washed over his face.

"So that we can stay together during the fall. Would you rather get separated?"

He clutched lamely at her hand, cheeks still gaunt.

"We step off on three. One."

The uninviting passage didn't promise wonders, didn't reassure them in the least bit.

"Two."

Coraline blocked out every thought, every worry, every fear fermenting in her head.

"THREE!" she shouted, and they were plunging into the dark.


	6. Reunion

_We all know that one of the ghost children referred to the Other Mother as "the beldam." For some reason, it's always annoyed me that people think that "beldam" is the Other Mother's real name or something. Well, my friend looked it up, and "beldam" is a noun, not a name. It means "An old woman in general; especially, an ugly old woman; a hag." _

_Check it if you don't believe me._

_As far as review replies go, I don't have anything to say; mostly I'm just getting some random comment about the text coupled with "please update soon." I should warn you, it's getting harder for me to do that..._

---

For a girl of only eleven years old, Coraline Jones had found herself in many exotic and frightening places. She had ascended the strands of an enormous web and crawled through a tunnel pulsing with cool light. She had reclined in a parlor filled with bioluminescent insects in the place of furniture and spent a night in a rocky chamber inhabited by ghost children. She had flown over a living garden crafted in her own image and watched bouncing rodents perform a ritualistic dance. She had been tossed through a theater by button-eyed actresses and even wandered into a realm in which there seemed to be nothing at all.

But when Coraline opened her eyes after the fall down the well, she knew she had never seen any place like the one she was in.

She was in an area so vastly black that she was unable to distinguish any sort of ceiling or walls, but she could tell which surface was albeit to a floor, because it was rifted by hairline faults of the purest, cleanest white. High above her shimmered an immense collaboration of glowing colors, shifting and slithering. The longer she stared into them, the more unnerving images appeared and disappeared, images of houses and gardens, places she thought she'd once known or seemed suspiciously familiar.

"Wybie?" Coraline called, clambering up to a sitting position.

"Jonesy? I'm over here," came the reply. Coraline's head swiveled, and she spotted her friend crouched a few meters away. "You'd better come and take a look at this."

She stood and cautiously ambled over, angled around Wybie, and caught sight of an object she knew hauntingly well: a bundle tied up in a blue terry-cloth blanket, cinched with a key on a loop of string.

"Oh God…is that…?"

"Only one way to find out," Wybie declared grimly. For a few moments he fiddled with the string; then a large rock and several splintered bits of steel were revealed.

Coraline exhaled roughly. "Great."

Wybie stood, hunched uneasily. "Is this…um, that other world place?"

She had a second look around, then shook her blue-haired head. "No. This is someplace different."

Long seconds passed, and nothing was said. Eventually, Coraline stooped down and reclaimed the miniature blanket, hers since before she was born. It was now marred by a smattering of mudstains, though it felt as dry as the Sahara Desert during a drought. She stuffed it into her messenger bag.

After a moment's consideration, she snatched up the key as well.

"What's that for?" Wybie asked.

"I have a feeling it will come in handy," Coraline replied. She draped the string around her neck. "Come on. Let's…explore."

With no landmarks to guide them, the duo was forced to randomly select a direction and head off that way. There was no conceivable process by which they could gauge the extent of the area they were in; any noise of passing stretched and expanded, filling any space it was able to seize, no echo ever returning to its source.

She didn't know how far they had traveled before Wybie's feet planted down and didn't lift again.

"Are you coming?" she hissed, tugging insistently on the sleeve of his jacket.

Wybie didn't respond. His saucer-sized eyes and continual swallows gave him the almost comical appearance of a drowning fish. But Coraline wasn't laughing as he lifted a shaky hand and stammered, "L-look, Jonesy."

Whether or not she'd ever seen something so repulsive in her life was debatable, but nothing altered the fact that the thing she now gazed upon was disgusting. Worse, she was able to determine that the warped, crumbling, ashy, dried-out husk before her had once been a person. No, not a person – a _puppet_; that was discernable from the black button eyes still clinging to the vile thing's face, though it had half disintegrated.

"Oh my God," Coraline managed.

"W-what _is _that thing?" Wybie spluttered, his face glowing pale in the multicolored luminescence. "Where _are _we?"

A new voice purred, "Well, where do you _think _you are?"

The cat padded out from the dark obscurity in that irritatingly superior way of his. If Coraline was going to be shocked by every other occurrence that day, she could at least maintain that she was _not _surprised to see him.

"So you can talk here, too," she murmured.

"I hadn't noticed," he replied in a voice that oozed sarcasm.

"Whu…? Cat…? _Talking…?_" Wybie released a nervous, slightly hysterical chuckle. "That's not weird at all…"

"Mind telling us what this place is?" asked Coraline, a sole strand of blue hair tumbling before her eyes as she bent down.

The very tip of the cat's tail flicked as he strutted casually around the vile thing. "Have you ever wondered about the fate of the worlds _she _designed for the children who came before you? Have you ever considered what happens to _her _toys when she's finished playing with them? Have you ever given a single thought as to how _she _could destroy – when she could never truly _create?"_

Coraline frowned. "What do you mean, the Other Mother couldn't create? Of course she could! She created whole universes, and people to inhabit them!"

"No," argued the cat. "She found a dimension, and used unearthly materials to build it up. She stitched up button-eyed dolls – you or I could do that. Of course, it takes special talents to bring them to life, but she never pulled anything out of thin air." The piercing intelligence of his cosmic-stardust eyes was pointed directly at her. "So it only stands to reason that she couldn't simply make them fade out of existence."

Gradually, Coraline was able to read between the lines. "So, everything she gets rid of ends up here?"

"Precisely."

"And then they all…die?" she whispered, pupils fluttering back to the husk.

"No, not exactly." The cat gave the matter some consideration. "Nothing she grants life to can be separate from her world for long. Most don't have any reason to resist, so they succumb immediately." He batted at the vile thing with one paw. "Their imprisoned carcasses simply waste away."

"That's…that's gross." Wybie seemed to rediscover his voice. "And not in a good way."

The cat sauntered away once again, venturing off into the dark with a sense of purpose. Coraline followed hurriedly, footsteps pattering behind him, a reluctant Wybie in tow.

"Does the Other Mother know?" she questioned.

"Does she? I don't believe she does. She's often ignorant about the flaws in her plans."

Coraline's mind behaved as a machine, inputting this, processing that, formulating a summary of the information she had heard.

"So, what you're saying is, we're in a dumping ground for the other world."

"Why yes, I believe we are."

"All the…toys…gave up and died a long time ago." Even as the words departed her lips, they were striding past more shells, arranged in clusters, all possessing some distinguishing characteristics, though she recognized none.

"Indeed they did."

"And the Other Mother doesn't know about it" The more she witnessed, the more she repeated, the more uneasy Coraline became. "Why'd you bring us down here, then? Just to tell us this?"

The cat paused, one leg extended in midstride, tail stirring the air.

"Recognize any of _these_?" he inquired.

Coraline looked. Close examination was not required to draw the conclusion that these cadavers were fresher than their predecessors; they were not completely ashen or devoid of color. The first were two women, entwined together, with razor-triangle teeth, tinged pink and green.

Coraline walked on.

"Hey…that kinda looks like Mr. B," Wybie piped up timidly when they came to a tall figure, spread over the surface that could be called the ground, with a pompous chest and a ringmaster's costume displaying the ghost of vibrancy. He peered over her shoulder at the heaps of grimy rats surrounding the corpse.

The next form littering their path was a malformed squash, sprouting mangled limbs and a disturbingly twisted expression plastered upon the misshapen head.

She halted there, a final question abruptly appearing within her brain.

"You said that _most _of the puppets succumb immediately," Coraline stated slowly. "So…what happens if they don't?"

The cat blinked equally slowly. "With the right determination, the souls can remain intact, though they will suffer. And some" – the infliction of his tone revealed that he was no longer referring to a nonspecific subject – "are still suffering."

She dashed ahead, nearly running the final leg of her journey, not noticing that there indeed seemed to be an edge where the morphing lights winked out. Her only priority was the huddled figure who was closer to being within her reach every millisecond.

He sensed her approach, and his head lurched and rose. It was difficult for him to keep it aloft, as he was weak and shaky; his neck appeared to wobble forth and back. But for the time being, his condition was a minor detail.

Because nothing could alter the fact that Coraline was once again gazing into the black button eyes of the Other Wybie.


	7. Wybie that talks

_A/N -- Saw Coraline for the fourth time on Friday, though unfortunately I couldn't see it in 3D. Oh, well, Coraline is Coraline. _

_It was really fun because my friend (baileymermaid95) and I were two of like seven people in the theater, and we had an in joke for every aspect of the movie. We were giggling the whole time. At the ghost children part, the people in front of us had to tell us to shut up. Hee hee hee. And, after realizing that I was hugging myself every time Other Wybie came on, I spent the weekend making a plushie of him. And you know what? I can't sew, but he looks pretty good._

_In other news...GAH! WHY DO I TORTURE MYSELF WITH THESE 95% CHARACTERIZATION 0% ACTION CHAPTERS!!!!!_

_Review replies..._

_Queenbean3: Aww, thank you! Honestly, you've got to be one of the most original writers I've ever seen._

_In The Beginning: There's-no-need-for-jealousy-ITB! I know I'm fantabulous, but don't start going green with envy on me._

_RockRaider: Hmm. That's not exactly how it was supposed to work...more like, the Other Mother THINKS she's destroying stuff, but it all ends up in another world, and you can just happen to get there by jumping down the well._

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"_Wybie!"_

"Yes?" her friend answered from behind her, but Coraline was already on her knees, digging her nails into the frictionless surface to prevent maximum skid. Her face was separated from the Other Wybie's by mere inches. He was unwell, pale and ill-looking, trembling from muscle fatigue as his static eyes scrutinized her. There was something…something flawed in him. Why didn't he acknowledge her? Had something occurred to rob him of his quirks, his charms, the personality that had formed within his tailored body?

Had he…forgotten her?

But then his cheek twitched and the corner of his mouth crawled up into the ancestor of a smile. One jittering hand reached out and brushed a tear from beneath her eye. Coraline hadn't even noticed she was crying.

The _real _Wybie, accompanied by the cat, shuffled up behind her. "Y'know, Jonesy, I don't appreciate being left behind in some…other dimension." He completed his trek and squatted down beside her. "What'd you find any – woah…"

The Other Wybie leaned forward, intrigued even in his unfavorable state. Coraline grinned through the streams trickling over her cheeks. "Quiet Wybie, meet Wybie who talks."

"Uh…hi," said Wybie. He tilted his head askew; his counterpart mirrored the movement exactly. "You…you can't talk at all?"

"No, he can't," answered Coraline matter-of-factly. "He always listens but never responds. Unlike _some _people…"

Wybie shoved his brunette mop away from his eyes with a skeleton-gloved hand; the Other Wybie provided a parody of the action. At that moment, she realized that each of the carbon copy's hands was firmly intact, clad in plain dark fabric.

"And you've got…button eyes." Wybie cleared his throat, fidgeting in discomfort. "Are those just…regular buttons…?" His twitching fingers reached out for his look-alike's face. The Other Wybie recoiled, which in turn caused the real Wybie to rear back; Other Wybie embraced his shuddering knees and peered at the living pair.

"What kind of brilliant move was _that_?!" demanded Coraline furiously. "You don't reach for someone's _eyes_!"

"But…his eyes…his ayes are…_fake_!" her friend spluttered.

"But don't _touch _them!" insisted Coraline. "Have you noticed that he's in a bad way?"

In a bad way…and creeping steadily downward. The Other Wybie's posture slumped alarmingly, his shoulders drooping, his head descending, curls again toppling down and veiling his sickly, colorless face. Whatever bubble of energy that had lent him temporary strength had burst.

Coraline's acrid edge softened. She made her way over to him while remaining on her knees, crawling soundlessly, finally arriving. She cradled his wilting face in her clammy hands, willing him to maintain his grip, trying to tether him to his remaining life. He allowed the connection, never releasing her gaze, as if her real eyes were pumping hope into her hopeless mind. His lips pursed, and for a very brief second he appeared to be consumed by rapt concentration.

It wavered and ended, so sudden and quick that it almost immediately vanished from her train of thought.

"How long has he been down here?" Coraline whispered.

The cat slid haughtily over, fur bristling as he brushed against her jeans. "For a while."

"Days? Weeks? Months?"

"Time isn't measurable here." The cat nestled into the Other Wybie's lap. "There's no hours or minutes, or even seconds. There's just time."

Wybie, who had been relatively transformed into an obsolete background layer, attempted to speak up, weaving fingers and palms over and between each other. "Um, Jonesy…"

As Coraline retracted her hands, she became aware that her gloves were coated in a fine, filmy residue of flesh-toned dust. She immediately detected her heartbeat reverberating, the organ pressed tight against her ribs. There was no conceivable change in the Other Wybie's appearance, but no doubt existed in her mind as to the source of the grime. Her mortification did not escape his notice, for he hunkered down father than ever, this time repelled by an unpreventable sense of shame. The edges of his button eyes reflected the glow of the twisting rainbows.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" she murmured.

"Not here," the cat replied promptly. "There's nothing to be done in this realm. He's reaching the limit of his life capacity, anyway."

"Well, then, I'll…I'll bring him back to my world!" Coraline blurted.

"Hey, Jonesy, would you please – "

"He'd fare no better there. You forget, he's essentially a living doll. He'll crumble back to cloth and dust in that world or here," the cat continued.

"But I've got to help him somehow!" she cried desperately, feeling her tear ducts release a fresh spurt. "He's…he's always been so selfless! He did so much for me when I was in trouble! I _have _to save him!"

The very most suspenseful type of ringing silence was what followed her proclamation. Every pair of eyes had settled upon her: real Wybie's, gleaming hazel and startled; Other Wybie's, expressionless and stagnant; and the cat's, coolly contemptuous.

"There is one thing," the feline said.

Coraline heaved in a gulp of oxygen. "What?"

"I daresay you won't like it."

The first suspicions as to the specifics of "it" began to reveal themselves to her, but the stubborn, excessively overconfident part of her denied the very possibility. Surely he couldn't even have been suggesting that…"

"Coraline, please." Wybie's voice was now embellished with a note of pleading. "Would you please just give me a real idea of what's happening here? I – I'm really missing something, I just know it. Can't you tell me what it is?"

And Coraline was forced to set aside that moment for the much-needed process of gathering her thoughts. Her line of vision wandered from Wybie to Wybie – perfectly synchronized in every physical detail (excluding the eyes), yet separated and individual in their mental states. Though one was flesh and blood and the other an artificial copy, they were not limited to sharing every attribute of their counterpart. They were two different people, each requiring something from her. A service she could deliver in both scenarios.

"I'm really sorry I've been keeping you out of the loop, Wybie. I've kind of been wrapped up in my own troubles. Besides, you of all people should know how bad I am at explaining things."

Wybie sprouted an apprehensive grin. "Sure do, Jonesy."

"But I promise I'll try my best on the way."

"On the…way?" His face began to transform to pasty again. "We…uh…we going somewhere, Jonesy?"

"Can you show us where to go?" she asked the cat.

He leapt up, slinking nearer to the dumping ground's outermost edge. "You haven't defeated her, you know. You rendered her delayed and incapacitated, but she's still very much alive."

Coraline nodded robotically. "I know. But it's a risk I'm willing to take."

"In that case, I can indeed show you where to go."

"Thanks." She focused again on the Other Wybie. "Can you stand?"

A definite no. At least, not of his own accord. But that was her expectation, and she was prepared to assist him in every way plausible. Though he was saturated with doubt and uncertainty from the beginning of the procedure, he obliged, drawing from the supply of her support, and was eventually able to resume an upright position.

"You're locking me out again, Jonesy!" Wybie squirmed, stuffed his hands into the depths of his pockets, shuffled his feet. "Where are we going?"

"We're going back." Coraline uttered the words she had intensely hoped she would never again even have to consider. "There's only one way to save the other you. We're going back to the Other World."


	8. Dangerous

_A/N -- Prepare for the last chapter you will have before I depart for San Antonio! Fear not, for during the long boring drive I shall have the ability to write at least one more part, if not two!_

_Oh, and everyone, say hi to gaaracrazed, another one of those people I have actually met in real life. So glad you like my story, gaaracrazed, but was it really necessary to submit a review to all seven chapters individually? Guess so..._

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Beyond the edge, the utter absence of light gave Coraline the sense that she was plunging into pure black. The subdued illumination of the ethereal dump had been extinguished so suddenly that the lights seemed to simply vanish. The two children and the look-alike doll were forced to join hands so as not to veer away from each other in the dark. The cat trotted casually ahead, coaxing them onward, guiding them with occasional verbal directional instructions.

To occupy the immeasurable void of time and space before them, Coraline recounted some of her relations with the Other Wybie, which served a dual purpose: Wybie was educated while his button-eyed clone was focused on something other than weakness and hopelessness.

"…and the door opened and I saw him standing there. I was like, 'Oh, great, another Wybie – '"

"Love you too, Jonesy," came a cynical voice to her right.

"Shut up! I'm saying this for you, y'know! Anyway, I said, 'Hello, Why-were-you-born,' but he didn't say anything, just gave me this tacky little wave. I was like, 'Hello!' and then the Other Mother showed up and said, 'I thought you'd like him more if he spoke a little less. So I fixed him.'"

"Offensive! Of-fen-sive!" Wybie prodded her arm with a gloved finger, and she gave his arm a more-than-adequate whack in response.

"Would you be quiet, Wyy-boorn! This is exactly why the other you can't talk!"

"Is it?" Wybie questioned, his query clearly directed at the Other Wybie, who leaned heavily on Coraline's shoulder.

A pause. Then Coraline commented, "I _think _he just nodded. But I can't be sure. I can't see anything."

"If you two are quite finished with your intriguing and relevant conversation," the cat interrupted, "then I'm afraid I must ask you to crawl now."

"Huh? How come?" Wybie demanded.

"That will become apparent to you both," the animal answered haughtily.

Coraline shrugged, tossed her cerulean hair behind her ear, and began to accommodate the Other Wybie as the pair dropped to their knees, closely accompanied by the real Wybie. They pressed ahead, slowly fumbling through the shroud of darkness, possessing no clear expectations.

Some part of her automatically recorded when her surroundings transformed. She detected the vacant, open space around her receding, sloping inward, and became aware that the surface beneath her hands and feet had a spongy, almost springy quality. The strands of a stringy, somewhat sticky substance brushed lightly against her cheek, and one of her hands connected with something solid, knocking against it dully.

She paused in her journey, and her fingers began to fumble with her messenger bag's catch from within the thickly knit gloves.

"Hey, Jonesy, you alright?" Wybie called beside her.

"Yeah, fine." One hand closed around the recently recollected flashlight. "Just hold on a sec…there!"

The dim yellow arm extending from the bulb slashed through the darkness, providing glimpses of a dark gray tunnel – not high enough to stand in, draped in a layer of cobwebs and supported by precarious beams. Embedded within the colorless floor were antique playthings – shattered marbles, cracked wooden sailboats, deflated balls and dented hoops, all from some other century.

Coraline was also able to see her companions again. The cat's back was firm and arched, his aqua eyes and bared teeth flashing in the glow of the beam. Wybie shielded his face as the golden splash passed over him. His other self made no attempt to expend energy in a similar manner; every ounce of his strength was providing for his labored crawl.

"Hang in there," she murmured, giving his coat-clad shoulder a gentle squeeze. "We're getting close now."

"And you know this because…?" Wybie asked, curls flopping as he glanced around spastically.

"I've been here before," she responded obdurately. "You know that little door in my living room? If you opened it, this tunnel is what you'd see. But it changes sometimes."

"…Changes?"

"Yup. The first time I saw it, it was all blue and sparkly. But I've seen it looking dead like this before, too. The first time I ever saw it this way…" Her hazel eyes fixated on the puppet struggling along at her side. "…it was when you saved me."

The Other Wybie offered a timidly modest smile from beneath the concealing curtain of his brunette locks.

"That's right. You, uh…" Wybie addressed his look-alike in a decidedly shamefaced manner. "You helped her escape, right? Back to our world. And then she came to me and I, um…I didn't believe her."

Oh. So _that _was the underlying cause of Wybie's embarrassment.

Being constructed of sawdust and stitching, the Other Wybie was unable to blush, but Coraline could not stop herself from envisioning a rosy tint in his cheeks as he bashfully fixated on the tunnel floor.

"And she won't let me forget it," his real-world counterpart added pointedly. "She never shuts up about you, if you wanna know the truth."

"I'm right here!" Coraline snapped, but the effect was spoiled by the grin slinking across her face. They may have been entwined within the web of a dire situation, but that didn't halt Wybie from his routine antics. And though it may have been the result of an optimistic imagination, the Other Wybie seemed to be holding his head a bit higher than before, and a lively glint now glittered in his black button eyes.

The cat had not invaded their affairs for a long while, but he abruptly sprung up to a decaying beam.

"I must request that you now tread extremely carefully, and cease these side chit-chats." His torn ears swiveled in time with the darting of his elliptical pupils. "We're close enough now to be heard."

So, as they advanced further through the horizontal shaft, Coraline and Wybie adopted the replicated doll's strategy of taciturn communication.

They were finally approaching the exit when the incident occurred.

The first warnings passed unnoticed. Coraline passively ignored the lame yet definite pull around her neck. Only when the tugging grew increasingly insistent did she pause for investigation. But by then it was too late.

She fished the key out from under the coverage of her raincoat and ensured that the loop of twine had not snagged on any of her coexisting articles of clothing. After a second's hesitation, the key itself ascended, manipulated by some invisible force that prompted it to rise.

It dangled in the air within apparent, tempting reach, and it seemed even to falter uncertainly in its suspension. She was unsure if either of the cat or either of the Wybies had noticed the phenomenon, but when she prepared to pluck it from its perch, the key suddenly jolted forward with a great spurt of momentum.

A ravaging shriek tore through Coraline's throat as she was dragged brutally by the neck. The taut thread cinched her airways, and she grappled at it in a panic, but her scrabbling fingers refused to catch purchase. She gasped, struggling to suck air into her sealed esophagus, but her frantic attempts produced no result.

Shouts of her name met her ears, still ringing in the aftermath of her own terrified screams. Hands latched on to her, struggling to haul her back as vivid spirals twisted before her eyes.

Wybie grabbed hold of her right wrist and yanked her with as much effort as possible. She actually skidded a few inches closer to him, but Coraline heard the sharp crack, felt her hand contort impossibly and the agony blaze up her arm, and another cry erupted from between her lips.

Finally, the vicious string began to loosen its hold as the Other Wybie struggled to work it free. At last it slipped unwillingly over her head. The button-eyed boy tossed it mercilessly to the ground, where it thrashed and writhed fruitlessly before flopping itself to limp. He had saved her again.

"Are you…okay, Jonesy?" Wybie croaked.

"Uhn." All Coraline managed with was a sort of trembling groan.

The Other Wybie, gripped by shock, eyed the inanimate key as if unable to comprehend how he had reacted. Perhaps he was not strictly organic, but something equivalent to adrenaline was certainly coursing through his being.

Using her left arm to secure her incapacitated wrist, Coraline leaned down and examined the key. No evidence remained as to its catastrophic transfiguration, but she knew what she had experienced.

The tip of her nose had nearly brushed it when, without warning, it made one last lunge at her.

Coraline leapt from her knees reflexively, disregarding in her panic the limited height of the tunnel. The back of her head slammed into a beam – and the strut snapped in two, showering splinters as raging torrents of pain from her wrist and skull consumed her.

"_Coraline!_" Wybie shouted.

She didn't even recall sinking to the floor as the world faded to black.


	9. The hand

_A/N -- Uh oh. Did I take a really, really, inexcusably long leave of absence from this story? Uh..._

_SHUT UP. NEIL GAIMAN DID THE SAME THING WHEN HE WAS WRITING CORALINE._

_Okay, now that I'm finally back in the buisness, here are some review replies. God, I hope that everybody didn't completely lose interest in this story..._

_InvaderJohnny: NO. NO. NONONONO. Where were you when I said that this wasn't a love story? I wasn't intending to make Coraline a damsel in distress, either -- she just happened to be the one with the key around her neck. If it had been Wybie with the key, I wouldn't have hesitated to make it happen to him._

_CaptainOfTheBadAssSquad: Wow, glad I could cause some excitement? But -- wordiness? Uh oh. Truly, I was just waiting for someone to say it..._

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Coraline came to with a headache that alternated between dull throbbing and searing tendrils of pain with a vicious grip on her skull.

"Hey, Jonesy, up and at 'em." The voice she ascertained to be Wybie's was lacking in its usual crude luster. Glove-shrouded hands clamped on to her arm and shook her with surprisingly little force. "C'mon, Coraline…"

The thinly begging quality of his tone – as if he had attempted this procedure several times with no result – prompted her to display a merciful action of some sort. Of course, he would never allow her to live down any sentimental gesture or comment, so she settled for halfheartedly swatting him away and muttering, "Quit it, Wyy-boorn."

"Hey, you're alive!" he exclaimed, only partly sarcastic.

"Of course I'm alive." The lids of her eyes lifted hesitantly, and a derelict gray expanse stretched as far as she could see – the interior of the passageway. Wybie's face solidified from an irregular blotch of colors as her vision cleared. He was crouched on one knee, a patch of curls nearly brushing the ceiling, neck stooped awkwardly.

"How long was I out?" she demanded, alertness returning in a rush.

"About ten minutes," he responded. "We were getting worried. That beam split, like, right in two…kind of hoping your head hadn't done the same."

Coraline eyed the remnants of the partially disintegrated wooden strut, the unequivalent halves aligned and propped up beside the little door – she had failed to acknowledge how close to the exit they had truly been.

Then a frown met her lips as she discerned that there was one fewer form huddled in the passageway than there should have been.

"Hey, where's – "

A series of raps sounded from the other side of the door, the oddly rhythmic knocking spelling out a coded sequence. Wybie's skeleton-gloved fingers extended towards the doorknob.

"What are you doing?" Coraline hissed.

"S'okay, Jonesy," Wybie reassured her. "It's just – " He rotated the handle, and the Other Wybie scampered in. The values of regular coloration had returned to his face, and as he hunched down in the passageway he was utterly identical to his real-world counterpart – save the minor discrepancies in his clothing and glimmering black button eyes. A warm, genuine smile spread across his face when he noticed that she was conscious.

"You look a lot better," she remarked as he seated himself among the sagging fibers of the floor, crossing his legs.

Wybie squatted beside his clone. "Anything?"

The living doll gave his head a vigorous shake, curls ricocheting as they rebounded from his scalp.

"'Anything?'" Coraline repeated. "What were you doing? Why was he out there, anyway?"

Wybie opened his mouth to respond, but as he did so the Other Wybie's jacket bulged, and the cat emerged from his collar.

"You are now lacking in the element of surprise," the cat said as he paced the narrow corridor apprehensively. "The commotion you caused arriving here has surely attracted _her _attention. _She _knows you're coming."

"Hey, it wasn't my fault!" Coraline found herself snapping defensively. "I got attacked by a rabid key!"

"Yes, you did," agreed the cat. "But that doesn't change the fact that she's expecting you. At least," he added, flicking his fidgeting tail as he spoke, "she's expecting _you, _Coraline, and _you, _Wybourne. She still believes – wrongly, but believes nonetheless – that she destroyed the Other Wybie."

"The cat told us that before," Wybie piped up, his enunciation revealing that he was not quite accustomed to the feline's verbose demeanor. "We figured it'd be best to run patrols of the outside. I went first, and after I got back – "

"You went _alone_?!" Coraline cried. "Do you have any idea of that the Other Mother would have done if she'd seen you? She _eats children_, Wybie! And she hates the other you for helping me!"

"What else could we have done?" Wybie protested. "You were unconscious, so one of us had to stay here! Besides, nothing happened. There wasn't anyone out there – not much of anything, really."

She scowled, dissatisfied. "What do you mean, 'not much of anything?'" She attempted to prop herself up, but the moment pressure was applied to her right wrist, flames of agony began a torturous spiral beyond her elbow. Air sizzled between her teeth as she inhaled sharply, jaws clenched. Reflexively, her remaining hand clutched at its inured double.

"Oh, yeah…" A shameful blush bloomed on Wybie's cheeks. "Um…Jonesy, I'm sorry. Your wrist…"

A band of swollen tissue embraced the skin beneath her hand; the hand itself danged askew at an obviously incorrect angle.

"It's broken," Coraline groaned as she methodically removed her glove, painstakingly tugging on each individual finger until it loosened.

The Other Wybie knelt beside her, his expression wrought with concern. His static eyes glistened as they scanned her enflamed wrist; his sawdust-stuffed gloves ascended and cradled the fracture with an unanticipated gentleness. When their sights aligned, the intangibly solid strand of focus returned to the carbon copy's mindset, and his lips parted a fraction. Though it remained for a longer duration, she was still unable to directly locate its origin, or the meaning of the unrecognizable gesture.

"Must've broken when I tried pulling you back…" Wybie muttered. "You wouldn't happen to have an Ace bandage in that bag of yours, would you? It'd probably be best to keep that secure…"

The words had hardly left his mouth when the Other Wybie was sifting through the contents of her satchel.

"There's nothing in -- " Coraline began, just as her duplicate friend produced her blue fleece blanket. She squinted at the square of pale fabric, shredded scraps plainly visible where needles had gouged into it, blotched with gray-brown stains. "What's that for?"

The Other Wybie guided her damaged wrist into the folds of the cloth and began to bind it up, efficiently constructing a makeshift cast around it.

"Okay, that'll work." Coraline glanced over at Wybie, who had pressed the side of his face against the little door and appeared to be listening intently.

"Hear anything?" she asked.

"Nope." He pulled back, thrusting curls away as they toppled in front of his eyes.

Coraline retracted her now-concealed wrist, gingerly wriggling her protruding fingers. She thanked the Other Wybie sincerely, and he offered her a timid smile.

"So, are we just going to sit here in a cramped passageway, or are we going to go out?" Wybie inquired.

"That depends on what's out there," she retorted.

He shrugged and opened the door.

Beyond it, the Other World seemed to have reverted to a clean slate. All value had vanished, leaving behind utterly immaculate white. Depth, however, was retained; the boundaries of walls and floors were represented by intangible gray lines. All in all, the setting provided a sense of being trapped in a dimensional template.

"Okay, that's just _weird_," Coraline declared.

"I told you there wasn't much of anything." Wybie peered out, unconcerned; the cat scampered atop his shoulder. He wormed his way through the opening, then proceeded to call to her from the other side, "See? Nothing to be scared of!"

"I wouldn't go that far," she muttered, knees scraping the doorframe as she cautiously followed him.

Being the denizen of a world as blank and vacant as a sheet of printer paper made Coraline feel exposed. If something should find the trio of children, there would be no formation or shelter to conceal them. She narrowed her eyes at the unmarred landscape, aware of Wybie wringing his hands to her left, aware of his button-eyed clone maneuvering through the passageway's mouth behind her.

"So, which way?" Wybie asked, pupils roving the sterile surface restlessly.

Coraline's bag rustled against her thigh as something scuttled over the lip of a pocket, trailing a loop of twine as it flopped to the ground with a scarcely audible _thump_. The key, its blackened iron surface coated with the grime of a cobwebbed tunnel.

"Here we go again," she sighed as the key writhed blindly and scuttled off to some unknown destination, clattering as it completed irregular revolutions along the ground.

"Let's follow it," suggested Wybie.

"Follow it?" repeated Coraline skeptically. "It's a key."

"We don't have any other way to go," he pointed out, the sole of his left shoe tracing spirals on the blank floor.

They were a sorry bunch, she reflected: a mute living doll, a squirming pre-teen boy, and an eleven-year-old girl with a broken wrist, all unprepared for whatever challenges this expedition might become. She recalled a time back in Pontiac – not as distant and hazy as the mist so often shrouding her current home – when she had neglected to prepare for an oral report. Standing before a tide of cheap institutionalized desks, she had been forced to utter words which she had given no thought to – "wing it" was the phrase she overheard later. It was once again necessary to fling herself into an uncertain situation, though something much more dire than a passing grade in English was at stake.

"Okay," she agreed reluctantly. "We'll wing it."

It was difficult to pursue the key while attempting to remain inconspicuous, and the entire procedure required a lot of lopsided steps and backtracking in order to follow the snaking path. Coraline was unable to discern where one room ended and the next began; likewise, her focus was not on the length of time during which they were trailing the living inanimate object.

So she knew neither the time nor the place when the key suddenly protruded the white ground _and was absorbed right into it_.

From her perspective, the sudden point of vanishment was albeit to a worm diving into moist soil with relish. Her boots slapped down as she halted in confusion. The Wybies, who flanked her on either side, paused a few inches behind her, also perplexed.

"What do we do now?" Coraline asked.

"I'm…not sure," Wybie admitted. "I mean, I didn't think – "

The key reemerged from the vacant surface, its pronged end jabbing at the air as it rose vertically upward. The three children shared a flabbergasted glance, but Coraline reached out for the lost article anyway. Her good hand was still hovering over it precariously when the Other Wybie frantically wrenched her arm back. The momentum caused them both to topple to the ground.

Wybie assisted them both as they scrabbled to their feet. "What was that all about?" he questioned.

Coraline didn't say anything. Because what she was seeing now, what the Other Wybie had seen first, what she should have suspected throughout this entire journey, was something she had desperately prayed she would never have to see again.

There were _needles _threaded through each of the four holes in the key's circular base. These were succeeded by a wasted, skeletal arm and hand, and a body as withered as wasted as the abandoned husks in the dumping ground. The form was draped in oddly metallic garments, the stiff fabrics punctured by protruding bones.

Then the left arm lifted, and the three children could see that a jagged break substituted for a hand. The stump flicked greasy bangs away from the figure's eyes, revealing angular features marred by tarry cracks. But even worse were the eyes – two black buttons sewn sloppily, blindly, on each side of the face.

"Hello, my dear," the figure crooned in a feminine voice that clashed against its monstrous appearance.

And that was when Coraline became absolutely certain that the Other Mother had returned.


	10. You know I love you

_A/N -- I can't believe it. I actually finished this fanfiction. I've NEVER finished a multi-chaptered fanfiction before! Ever!!!_

_This isn't the last chapter -- three more to go -- but I've officially completed the draft of the entire fanfiction. Now that I'm on summer vacation, I'll have more time for typing and posting, so they should be up pretty soon._

_In other news -- only two reviews for the last chapter? I know I was gone for awhile, but did I really lose all those fans?_

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The three stood huddled together, the close contact conducting every movement. The Other Wybie was shivering like a wet cat. Coraline fumbled for his hand and squeezed it firmly, but if he noticed this, he didn't acknowledge it.

On her other side, Wybie's face was frozen into an expression of shock, disgust, and fear. "Whu – what is _that_?" he spluttered, and she would have sworn that the blood was visibly draining from his face.

"That's-the-Other-Mother." Coraline was unable to bring her voice above the volume of a choked, strenuous whisper.

"_That?!_" Wybie would have fainted had he lost any more blood from his head. "My God!"

Coraline was about to ask if he'd ever listened to anything she'd said about the Other World when the gruesome being before them spoke.

"How nice of you to return at last, my darling." The Other Mother's shriveled black lips inched into a menacing smile. "I was so worried about you. But there comes a time when every daughter tries to run away from home, and they always return. It takes a mother to welcome the sorry child back."

"I'm not sorry," Coraline snapped. "And I don't need any welcome from you."

The Other Mother passively ignored her. Instead, she began sizing up Wybie as if he were a brightly painted toy freshly torn from its box – or a piece of meat she was preparing to cook.

"You've brought your friend!" she gushed. "Little Wyborne Lovat. Isn't he just _precious_!" With her single hand and jagged stump, she fussed over him, straightening his coat and mussing up his curls. "I wasn't expecting company, Coraline. But I'm sure it won't be any trouble to have him for dinner."

By this time, Wybie was shaking, his breathing reduced to irregular gasps as he struggled to restrain himself from writhing in disgust. Coraline seized his sleeve with her good hand and snatched him back beside her, out of the reach of those skittering needle fingers.

The slightest of frowns curled at the Other Mother's lips. "Why, that wasn't very courteous, dear. But I just want you to know that I forgive you…for everything you've done. As long as you are a temperent and devoted daughter – "

And she stopped.

Her head was directed to Coraline's right. She had caught sight of the Other Wybie. As the children looked on, her face contorted into an expression of rage incapable of being reproduced on a human being. Coraline had seen that expression once before. It was the mask of unbridled evil that the Other Mother had worn after the cat had initially clawed off her eyes.

"_You_," she hissed.

The Other Wybie cringed and cowered, shielding his head with his arms. He was utterly defenseless against anything the Other Mother might decide to do to him. Somehow Coraline knew that he had been exposed to her brutal punishments before.

And she found herself stepping in front of him defensively.

"Leave him alone!" she declared.

The Other Mother smiled maliciously. "Now, Coraline move out of the way. I don't want to have to punish you, too."

Coraline drew herself up, narrowed her eyes, glared right into the Other Mother's hideous face, and said, "Evil _witch. I'm not scared._"

The Other Mother's smile slipped away and was replaced by bare teeth.

"You should be," she whispered.

Soft fingers sunk into her arm and wrenched her to the side, and all at once she was stumbling after the Wybies as they sprinted in another direction. There was a roar and a sort of clattering crash behind her, and she knew the Other Mother had lunged upon the spot where she'd been standing a moment earlier.

"Where are we going?" she panted, sprinting down what she assumed had once been a hallway.

"Let's figure that out later!" cried Wybie, who had taken the lead of their speedy procession.

Coraline opened her mouth to reply – but the next thing to happen resulted in catastrophic consenquences.

She tripped.

Her galoshes snagged on each other, and she went tumbling down. Her mouth locked into a wide oval as her arms outstretched, attempting to break her fall. When she collided with the floor, pain spurted through her injured wrist. Gasping from the force of the impact, she didn't have the opportunity to even try to clamber to her feet when metal arms enfolded her.

"Now, don't you run away from me again, darling Coraline," whispered the voice of the Other Mother beside her ear.

"Wybie!" Coraline screamed, and was rewarded by a mouthful of steel, blood dripping down her gums as needle-tips pierced the tender pink flesh.

"Don't worry about your friends, sweetie. They saw that you fell." A sadistic giggle. "They just weren't fast enough."

Coraline didn't know how the Other Mother was doing it, but her limbs seemed to be paralyzed. She couldn't move. Her eyes darted around frantically, seeking her friends.

And there they were. Wybie and the Other Wybie were huddled at the end of the passage, with no possible means of escape. The Other Mother frowned down at Wybie as if he were a very small child caught stealing cookies from the kitchen. "For the record, I'm not much fond of little boys," she said

Her expression darkened as she glared down at the cowering Other Wybie.

Or little traitors," she added.

And then Coraline was being dragged involuntarily down impossibly misshapen halls, traveling so swiftly that her mind was soon reeling from trying to calculate the route. Finally, the Other Mother arrived at a solid door, its varnished wooden tones resplendent against the unblemished white of the wall, and wrenched it open as best she could while smothering a girl in her arms.

The space behind the door was not the color of a freshly polished whiteboard. The room was enclosed by darkness, the kind of darkness that exists after you turn off the lights in your bedroom at night – not complete blackness, but enough to muffle shapes and make everything uncertain. A source of light glowed somewhere unseen, more otherworldly than any candle. With a shock, Coraline realized that she had seen this room before – not in reality, _but in a dream_.

She now, belatedly, understood her very first dream of the Other Wybie. This was the Other Mother's workshop, and she knew what he had been doing there.

And what she was doing her now.

There was a tug on her wrists. Coraline sucked in a breath as the Other Mother retracted her hand. Then her wrists were cinched together by a substance that had the feel of cotton thread. She was soon bound tightly enough to uncomfortably restrict the circulation in her hands.

"What are you doing?" she snapped, wringing her hands in unsuccessful attempts to break free of her bonds.

The Other Mother held a hazardously sharp finger to her shriveled lips. "Hush, my darling Coraline." She twisted her hand along the handle of a drawer and removed from it a strip of scrap fabric. "Ah, here we are…"

Without warning, she shoved a clump of stuffing into Coraline's mouth. Quickly, before the startled girl had the opportunity to spit the gag out, the Other Mother wound the cloth over the lower half of Coraline's face. Then she tossed the vainly protesting pre-teen upon an oversized sewing table.

Coraline screamed through the layering over her lips as the Other Mother inserted sewing pins at regular intervals into her clothes until she was firmly attached to the table. The Other Mother proceeded to reach into another drawer.

"Now, I want you to know, Coraline, that this is for your own good," crooned the beldam of a woman, in the voice that juxtaposed the being it escaped from. "Because I love you. You know I love you, Coraline."

She clicked two buttons between her fingers.

Coraline suddenly felt as if she had swapped places with the Other Wybie in that now-distant dream. Here she was, futilely struggling, helpless against the force looming over her. But she was well aware that it was not her smile that would be stitched in place. She wondered how much she would be altered by button eyes. Her mind became consumed by the trivial ponderings of how those shining black circles of plastic were truly able to see at all.

The Other Mother's hand lowered. She reached down to set the first button in place…

"_Get away from my friend, you ugly monster!!!!!!!!!!_"

The wooden door exploded inward, and Coraline squinted into the unnatural light, her real eyes still wonderfully intact. The Other Mother roared, enraged, as Wybie tackled her to the floor. The two buttons pitter-pattered against the far wall.

Wybie was unarmed, but he had both hands and the element of surprise on his side. He beat upon the howling Other Mother repeatedly with his fists. It was actually quite amusing to watch. Coraline had nearly managed to forget about her own predicament until she felt the loop of thread around her wrists beginning to loosen. Coraline turned as best she could, only to have the gag torn away from her face.

She spat out the stuffing clod just in time to see the Other Wybie setting to work on the sewing pins. A thankful grin crept across her lips. "You guys came back for me!" she whispered excitedly.

He shyly returned her smile, then extended a hand. Coraline leapt off the table with relish.

By this time, the Other Mother had reared up to a standing position. Wybie clung to her piggyback-style, still delivering a barrage of assaults. Coraline could tell that he was getting into it by the triumphant glint in his eyes. In one swift move, he had smothered her face with his arms; in the next, one of her nearly-dangling eyes came off in his hand. The Other Mother released a grating shriek of rage and pain, but Wybie merely laughed, as if he were Hercules fighting a hydra.

"_YOU HORRIBLE, DISGUSTING, UNGRATEFUL BOY…!_" the Other Mother roared.

"Right back at 'cha!" Wybie answered, somehow dodging her each time she lashed out at him. "Now, silence, knave, or I'll cut off your other hand!"

It was exactly the wrong thing to say.

"IT WAS _YOU_!" she screeched, bucking Wybie to the floor in an instant. "IT WAS _YOU_! _YOU_ DESTROYED MY HAND! _YOU_! _YOU MUST PAY_!!!!!!"

"Come on!" called Coraline, sprinting towards the still-open door with the Other Wybie at her heels. Dread and desperation, cold and dense, began to seep into her chest. "Come on, Wybie! Get up! Get up! We have to run!"

Wybie staggered to his feet, dazed, but managed to shake himself and make his way over to them in time. This time Coraline took the lead in their frantic dash down the hall. But that didn't change the fact that there was nowhere to go. The entire house was a mass of pristine white. There was nothing there except –

"The mirror!" Coraline gasped, watching as their image expanded in the full-length frame.

"What about it?" Wybie panted.

"Get inside!"

"Inside the mirror? What – "

He was never able to complete his sentence. Because at that moment, she acknowledged the flaw in the reflection. And at that moment, she pushed him towards the glass harder than she ever thought herself capable of. He fell through the surface as if it were a single smooth sheet of cascading water and was gone.

Coraline backtracked. She rounded a corner, her heart pounding, though she was immune to the fear. She heard the Other Mother before the monstrous woman came into view.

"…think you know what pain is?! You know _nothing_! You're an ignorant, insolent excuse for a child! I don't even know how you're alive, but I hope you've enjoyed it, because you won't be for much longer!"

Coraline bounded towards the sound, no longer bothering to be sneaky. The Other Mother had caught hold of the Other Wybie's sleeve and was screaming profanities into the face of the cringing, cowering boy. Without stopping to map out her actions, Coraline made her next move: she seized the back of his collar with her good hand, wrapped her other arm around his waist, and pulled.

The Other Wybie turned around. His eyes were pleading as he frantically signaled for her to flee, to run so that the Other Mother wouldn't catch them both.

"No!" Coraline cried decisively. "I'm not leaving you behind again!" She grunted, and with a final tug, he came free.

The duo wobbled on their feet, but they didn't hesitate. They held on to each other and ran. They didn't look behind them to see if they were being pursued; they simply sprinted forward. Coraline felt herself tilted forward, felt almost sure that she would fall, but she used her own momentum and the Other Wybie's support and forced herself to keep moving. They didn't stop running until they reached the mirror and they tumbled inside.


	11. Alone

_A/N -- I'm well aware that the dream sequence doesn't synchronize perfectly with the movie. Partly it's because I hadn't seen the movie for a long time when I wrote this chapter, and partly it's to differentiate the dreams from what actually happened._

_By the by, this chapter is long. And by long I mean L-O-N-G. So you better have some serious time set aside to finish reading it._

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Wybie scrabbled out of the way as they tumbled through the portal, still clinging to each other for dear life. Coraline landed hard on her side, the cold and the damp from the slick floor seeping into her skin. She shuddered as she struggled to her feet. Her chest heaved as she gasped for the air that had been denied to her lungs during her mad dash.

The Other Wybie seemed barely able to lift himself. He slumped against a wall, his gloves seeking purchase as if it were all that would hold him secure. His shivering had nothing to do with the temperature of the dank stone chamber.

"Are…are you guys okay?" asked Wybie.

Coraline, still winded, sucked in several deep breaths before answering.

"We're alive," she panted. "We got away from the Other Mother, and we're alive."

"What happened?" he questioned. "You – you pushed me in here and then disappeared. I thought that you'd…" His voice decrescendoed into nothingness.

"It was the other you," Coraline explained breathlessly. "She caught him. Just as we were running away. I didn't notice it until we got the mirror, and then I – I had to go back for him."

Wybie traced spirals on the ground, not catching her gaze. "I get it," he finally said, nodding. "After all, we've come this far."

Yes, they certainly had come far. Had it only been earlier that same morning that she had awakened from her heart-wrenching dream of the Other Wybie's destruction? It seemed as though weeks had passed since then. Now here she was, once again trapped in this derelict chamber of blue stone – and once again, the Other Wybie was beside her.

"What you did back there Wyy-boorn?" she said.

"Yes, Jonesy?"

"Was probably the _stupidest_ thing you've ever done!" Coraline declared.

Wybie looked offended. "What? No 'thanks for saving me?' No 'thanks for risking your life to save _my_ problem?'"

Coraline gave an exasperated huff. "I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, 'Silence, knave, or I'll cut off your other hand!'" She folded her arms across her chest and eyeballed him imploringly. "You do realize that you were in the clear until you _basically told her that you destroyed her right hand_?"

"Well…it…it just kind of…slipped out!" spluttered Wybie.

She slugged his shoulder hard. "You still talk too much."

He gingerly massaged the bruise undoubtedly forming beneath his jacket, but didn't reply. Coraline had the reluctant realization that she wasn't exactly expressing her gratitude, considering that this goofy, obnoxious neighborhood kid had just gone up against a force he knew nothing about to save her from a terrible fate.

"Thanks for saving me anyway," she said.

Wybie flashed her a smile, the same modest grin he'd worn on the night they'd dropped the fragmented hand down the well (and unknowingly into the dumping ground). "No problem, Jonesy." Suddenly, he yawned, shrouding the action behind a skeleton-gloved hand. "Am I the only one who's tired?"

"No." And it was true – she was exhausted. She had spent the course of the day jumping down a well, being attacked by a possessed key, and running for her life three times within the space of twenty minutes. None of that was exactly relaxing, yet its increasing frequency seemed to suggest that it was all in a day's work for Coraline Jones.

"We should sleep in shifts," Coraline decided. "One of us has to stand guard, in case something – "

The Other Wybie tapped her on the shoulder.

She craned her neck to face him. "What is it?"

He scrambled over to an upper corner and seated himself there, crossing his legs comfortably, cocking his head as he waited to see if they understood.

Coraline did, and was doubtful. "Are you sure? You don't have to – "

The Other Wybie held a single finger to his lips and shushed her.

"Well, all right." She leaned back against the coarse stone wall and attempted to maneuver into a semi-comfortable position. "Night, then."

"Night, Jonesy," yawned Wybie, who was reclining close beside her.

Across the cupboard, the Other Wybie maintained his modest smile. As she drifted off, she made the decision that he was the only one of the Other Mother's toys whose eyes weren't disconcerting to look upon. Those two black buttons were trained directly on her, but they seemed so infinitely natural that she actually felt a sense of security.

She closed her own eyes and sank into a much-needed slumber.

________________________________________________________________________

Coraline smacked her lips as she completed another succulent meal from her Other Mother. The radiant button-eyed woman sat directly across from her, plump red lips curled into a smile, pale hands folded atop the table.

"Coraline, Mr. Bobinsky has invited you to come see his mice circus," she suddenly said, flashing pearly teeth.

Coraline brightened. "Really? That know-it-all Wybie said it was all in Mr. B's head." She popped a bite of sausage into her mouth and chewed it triumphantly. "I knew he was wrong."

The Other Mother stood and straightened her skirt. "You and your _friend _had better get going or you'll be late."

Perplexed, Coraline raised an eyebrow. "My _friend_?"

With a flourish, the Other Mother opened the door leading from the kitchen to the outside. Standing on the porch, framed in the doorway, was a boy of eleven dressed in a plain black coat that slapped against the thighs of his cuffed jeans. Beneath his dark tresses of curly hair were two gleaming black buttons.

"Oh, great, another Wybie," said Coraline, rolling her eyes. The boy – the Other Wybie – continued to gaze at her, a dazed smile drawn on his face. She placed her hands on her hips as she confronted him. "Hello, Why-were-you-born."

He lifted his hand and gave her a corny little wave.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Hello!"

The Other Mother appeared behind him. She wrapped one arm around her creation's shoulders and placed her other hand on top of his flat curls. "I thought you'd like him more if he spoke a little less." She patted him on the head as if he were an obedient puppy dog. "So I fixed him."

Coraline considered this, studying the Other Wybie once more. "So, _he _can't talk at all?"

"Nope," replied the Other Mother, running her crimson nails through the carbon copy's mass of curls.

"Huh." Coraline nodded her approval. "I like it."

"Now, run along, you two," crooned the Other Mother, giving the Other Wybie a gentle push to get him out the door. "And have fun!"

Coraline followed the unusual boy down the porch steps; he had a bounce in his stepp and bobbed his head as if to some inaudible tune.

"You're awful cheerful, considering you can't say anything," she remarked as they padded around the house. "Um…it didn't hurt, did it? When she – "

The Other Wybie spun around. His vacant grin had been replaced by an expression of anxiety and panic. He grabbed her shoulders and began to shake her gently. There was something else, too – a sort of soft whispery noise, like someone making the hard "c" sound: "Ccc." There was a brief pause, and then it repeated, more urgent this time: "Ccc!…"

______________________________________________________________________

And somewhere around that time, her dream ended and reality began, but the Other Wybie remained. Coraline struggled to drag herself from the bleariness of sleep and into lucidity. He took a few quick steps back as she yawned, rubbing her eyes with the back of her arm as if that would get them to remain open.

"How long was I asleep?" she murmured.

"For quite long enough."

Out of the dim shapes that seemed to materialize from the shadows came the silhouette of the cat. His pressed-flat ears jutted out to the sides; his ultramarine eyes flashed apprehensively. "Wake your friend. We have our final matters to attend to."

_Final matters? _Coraline didn't like the sound of that, not at all. Regardless, she crouched beside Wybie, who was sleeping so soundly that even his snores had been silenced, and began to shake him forcefully.

Wybie's eyelids fluttered. "Whu…?" he mumbled sleepily, shifting as if to squirm away from her.

"Wake up, sunshine," she whispered. "We've got things to do."

He shook himself vigorously and swept his hair away from his eyes. "I'm up, I'm up," he yawned. "Now, exactly what things do we have to do, Jonesy?"

"Allow me to explain," offered the cat as he leaned back on his haunches. "I hope that you've rested well, because you're certainly going to need it. You see, you three are about to confront _her_ one last time."

"We're going to do what now?!" exclaimed Wybie, alarmed. The Other Wybie's coat rustled as he sat to attention, startled. Coraline was indeed surprised, but she merely narrowed her eyes at the cat and waited for him to elaborate.

He didn't disappoint. "Each of you has had some experience playing her games before – even you, Wyborne. And coming up now – now that she's recovered from your little surprise – is the climax, the denouement, the final round. This is the part where you win – or lose. This is the part where you succeed – or fail. This is the part where you live – _or die_."

Coraline swallowed in the back of her throat. "What do we do?"

"Be creative." The cat gave a low, rumbling, sarcastic chuckle. "Use your imaginations." He stepped back as if to spring through the exit wall.

"Wait – aren't you coming with us?" Coraline demanded.

"I can't," the cat replied, and jumped. A suffused blue light shone around his backside as he protruded the surface, and then he was gone.

"Does…he do that often?" Wybie asked uncertainly.

"Yes," huffed Coraline. She smacked the spot where he'd vanished, but her palm only thudded against a solid surface. "Well, I guess we should go and see what he was talking about."

"But how do we get out?" Wybie was eyeing her ineffective attempts to break the surface with increasing anxiety. "I mean, there has to be a way, right? A door, a switch…something…"

The Other Wybie stood, strode over to the exit wall, and regarded it with neutrality. With a grimace, he took one extra-high step toward it and pushed through. A moment later, one of his arms stretched out to them.

"I guess this is how," Coraline told Wybie, placing her good hand into the Other Wybie's.

Being pulled through the mirror reminded her of plunging underwater, where the sound changed and sight shimmered and everything was in slow motion. Then one of her boots came in contact with the carpet, and she staggered, flailing her arms to stay balanced. She turned to find the Other Wybie, consumed in the mirror up to his shoulder, looking as if he were groping around for something inside. Then he seemed to be tugging, a look of rapt concentration crossing his face, and he produced his real-world counterpart. Wybie blinked in the sudden glare of the lights. "Woah."

That was about how Coraline felt, too. The previously existing white backdrop seemed to have been stripped away and replaced by the detailings of an elegant flat. She could have been in her own home, but she knew better than that. This was simply the alluring guise of a world that hardly existed at all.

Someone was humming within earshot, a sound both lyrical and disconcerting. It was tauntingly loud and only grew louder as the three children crept toward it apprehensively. "MMM-mmm, _mmm_-mmm. MMM-_mmm_ mm_mm_ mmmMMMmmm…" They had now reached the dining room, and Coraline was certain that she had heard the exotic tune somewhere before, perhaps in another dream.

The interior of the kitchen seemed cozy, but there was a hunched and wasted form bent over the stove. The head turned toward them as slowly as if it moved on rusted bearings. There was now only one button beneath the swaths of greasy bangs.

"Well, sit down," said the Other Mother curtly.

Coraline entered with her back arched and her head held straight, showing that she wasn't afraid any longer. Wybie's entrance was somewhat more reluctant, and the Other Wybie practically had to be dragged into the kitchen.

There were only three chairs around the little table, and as they tensely took their seats, Coraline reached out for the Other Wybie's quivering hand. She grasped the gloved fingers reassuringly and gave them a little squeeze. _Don't worry_, she beamed to him silently. _Don't be scared_. This time, she felt him squeeze back.

"You know, Coraline," said the Other Mother, "you've been a very bad daughter lately."

Coraline was wise enough not to say anything.

"What I've decided," the withered woman continued, "is that I cannot deal with you any longer, Coraline. You simply don't want my love."

Coraline anticipated that this would be succeeded by an attack, and so she braced herself, but physical preparations didn't prevent her from being thrown by the Other Mother's next declaration.

"So I'm going to let you go."

"What?!" Coraline and Wybie cried out in unison. It was unbelievable. It was simply too _good _to be believed, which was why neither of them believed it.

"I've been trying, Coraline," the Other Mother sighed, "to win your love, but nothing's worked. I don't have any other choice. There are other children out there, children who will actually appreciate a mother."

But after all of her recent experiences, Coraline wasn't about to be deflected so easily. "This isn't free," she challenged. "What do you want?"

The Other Mother smirked. "Clever girl. Don't worry, Coraline. I don't want anything from you." She leaned in close, so close that Coraline could smell her stale, musty breath. "But I want Wyborne."

Someone seemed to have pressed the mute button on the world. Coraline was sure that she'd heard incorrectly. "What?" she managed.

"Wybie, dear. Both of them, actually." She frowned. "The _Other _Wybie must be punished. But I need _your _Wybie to keep me going. Since you're not going to stay here…"

Coraline couldn't seem to catch her breath. Blood was zipping through her veins so quickly that she could hear it throbbing in her ears. The Wybies had never looked more alike than they did now, faces contorted into identical expressions of terror. They were trapped. They were under the gun. And they needed her, needed her word to escape, needed her to stand up as she was doing now and scream out at the top of her lungs:

"NO! THAT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! THAT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!! YOU'RE NOT TAKING EITHER OF THEM AND YOU'RE NOT TAKING ME!!!"

It was all the stimulus the Other Mother needed to transform from specious humanity into an enraged beast. "Then you leave me no choice!" she snarled, and swung her arm down at them.

But the children were already on the move, scurrying off in a triangular formation, and the Other Mother's arm connected with the table. The tabletop spit sloppily in two, and as Coraline leapt upon the kitchen counter, she spotted the Other Wybie darting beneath one of the halves.

The Other Mother lunged at her first, but she twisted and ducked and finally jumped from her perch to the floor. But even then she was being chased, and as she stumbled and staggered within the confines of the tiny kitchen, the Other Mother's riveted legs were driving down, determined to spear her. She nosedived into a corner, panting furiously, and noticed the Other Mother aiming at Wybie. He had backed into a wall and hit the floor as she drove the stump of her right hand into the wall above him. He glanced at her, perhaps estimating the amount of time it would take her to free herself, then bolted towards Coraline.

Coraline saw this, and attempted to divert him, but her cry of, "No, Wybie!" escaped her lips too late. He skidded and went sprawling upon the floor next to her. Chunks of plaster cascaded down as the Other Mother wrenched her hand from the wall, and, with a triumphant cackle, she clattered over to them.

"I have you now!" she hissed down at the cornered children.

Then her mouth dropped open as she was shoved violently aside.

Standing to her left, on the side from which she'd been pushed, was the Other Wybie. A decided, almost angry expression was wrought into his childlike features. The Other Mother lurched and rose, scowling down at him, but her creation merely returned the glare, undaunted.

He wasn't afraid of her anymore.

The Other Mother threw back her head and laughed wildly. "Just you and me again, huh? That hardly seems fair, but if you insist…"

She swiped at his side. He casually stepped out of the way. She swiped at his head. He ducked and immediately straightened up again. Infuriated, she twisted down closer to him, tensing herself for the strike…

And then the Other Wybie made his move. From Coraline's angle it seemed that his hand quickly darted up to the Other Mother's face, then returned to its former position at his side. But she howled in a way that sent the house's foundations rattling, and struck him with such force that his feet lifted from the floor.

"Wybie!" Coraline yelled to the boy beside her, but fortunately they'd both had the same idea. They joined hands and formed a brace between them, and the Other Wybie fell into their outstretched arms, dazed but otherwise unharmed.

"Are you okay?" Coraline asked breathlessly, and he nodded, a little smile slipping out. He raised up his hand victoriously, and unclenched his fingers just enough so that they could see what was clutched in his hand.

It was the Other Mother's final eye.

The Other Mother was sinking pitifully down to her hideous knees. "Don't do this, don't do this…" she rasped. "You'll…you'll…"

"We'll what?" asked Coraline, boldly approaching the incapacitated witch.

The Other Mother shook her head. She did not look at them, for she could no longer see. "Kill me…" she whispered. "Kill me, kill me, kill me…"

And even as she spoke, it seemed to Coraline that she was getting a little blurry around the edges.

And then she was fading away, as if she were an image on a television screen that someone had just turned off.

And then there was no one in the destroyed flat but three children, one with button eyes, who had faced pure evil for the last time.

The Other Mother was no more.

They were alone.


	12. Coraline dispair

_A/N -- Two chaptes in one day? Can you say spoiled?_

_That's right, folks, the main villain's gone and there's still more! Fear not, for chapter thirteen (the chapter after this one) is the finale of The Forgotten!_

_It's been great knowing you._

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Coraline, Wybie, and the Other Wybie were laughing and crying and hugging and cheering all at the same time. Though the Other Wybie silently pantomimed the actions he could not perform, he was as thrilled as his friends. So caught up in their makeshift celebrations were they that they were a little startled when they heard a voice say:

"Splendid work, you three!" The cat leapt from the window ledge, flicking his whiskers cynically. "You actually managed to destroy an ancient force of impenetrable evil. I always knew you had it in you."

"So she's really gone for good this time?" asked Coraline breathlessly.

"Really and truly," confirmed the cat. "She's been deported to the dumping ground. That's the last you'll ever see of her."

"Yes!" exclaimed Wybie, pumping both fists into the air. "Yes, yes, yes!"

"You can celebrate later," the cat continued. "But right now, it's best to get out of here. This entire world will start to disintegrate soon."

Coraline paused. Her brow crinkled in confusion. "What?" she asked.

"Now that _she_'s gone, all of her creations will vanish," explained the cat. "It's best not to be trapped here when that happens, don't you think so?"

But he never received a response. Coraline could feel all the happiness draining from her like bathwater down a plughole. It couldn't be. This couldn't be happening. Not after everything they'd been through. Not after all they'd accomplished. Not after their final defeat of the Other Mother…

"You okay, Jonesy?" asked Wybie. "You don't look so good."

"Oh, Wybie…" said Coraline, but her words were not directed at her talkative, real-eyed neighbor friend.

The cat solemnly nodded, reading into her thoughts with unparalleled precision. "So, you understand. Everything, Coraline Jones. Everything – and every_one_."

Wybie gasped. "Oh, no…no way!"

The Other Wybie's face twisted into an expression of fleeting panic. He glanced at the button still clutched in his hand and hurled it across the desolate kitchen, but of course he knew – as they all knew – that it would be of no help.

"W-what do we do?" stammered Wybie.

"What _can_ we do?" answered Coraline miserably. "I can't believe this! We can't have come this far for nothing!"

The dismayed Other Wybie seemed to be unsure of which speaker to look at. He certainly looked lie he expected to drop dead within the next three seconds. Finally he seemed to decide upon keeping his gaze on the cat. The feline's tail twitched with clockwork rhythm as he said, "The way I see it, there are two options you can choose from." He gazed at Coraline imploringly. "The first, you can carry on as you are. In due time, the Other Wybie will pass back into the dumping ground and perish there."

"What's the second option?" asked Coraline helplessly.

"You can bring him to your world, and he'll crumble to dust _there_."

To Coraline, for whom this entire affair was like a punch in the gut, there was no discernable difference between the two choices. "What's the point?" she cried, restraining the bitter tears threatening to ooze from her eyes. "It doesn't matter what we do. He's going to die either way."

"'Die' is such a negative word," the cat reprimanded. "And it won't be as such if you bring him to your world. If his life ends out of his creator's influence, he will be set free. And at this point, that's the best that any of you can hope for."

_Set free_. Coraline thought of the Other Wybie, and how he could never, in life or death, escape from the Other Mother. Maybe she had been going about this in the wrong way. Maybe all he had really needed was his freedom, however brief it might turn out to be. She took a deep, shuddering breath, steeled herself, and allowed a suffused smile to emerge as she looked at the Other Wybie.

"Would you like to come see where I live?" she asked softly.

The Other Wybie timidly nodded.

Wybie sighed, looking lower than she would have expected. "I guess that's all settled, then. How do we get out? Through the passageway again?"

"I know of a better way," replied the cat. "Open the side door."

Coraline did, and the cat trotted out into an outside that was losing its elaboration and seemed a bit blurry and pale at the horizon line. He sauntered over to the fallen tree splayed out across the yard. By the time Coraline and the Wybies had crossed the yard and reached it, he had disappeared through the open knothole.

She was the first to follow him. She'd swung herself into the round hole boots-first, and had ducked down upon finding herself in a narrow cylindrical tunnel. Someplace up ahead of her, there was a circle of light, an opening in the ceiling of the passage. She crawled toward it, instinctively knowing that it was the way out, and she placed her hands on the edges and hauled herself up out of the darkness…

Coraline gasped as she resurfaced. She had climbed out of the well, and was now standing atop the craggy hillside. The Wybies were crawling up behind, and she heard them inhale sharply as they reached the surface. But the Other Wybie's exclamatory action had nothing to do with their fantastical reappearance.

The sun was setting, the blazing crimson orb dyeing the sky in brilliant hues, like blots of colored ink staining the world. The Other Wybie's black button eyes reflected the receding light, and Coraline knew that for a boy whom had known only eternal night, a sunset was the most beautiful thing in the world.

The cat was seated towards the edge of the hill, near the bluff. "You have a few more minutes," he said, "in case you wanted to – " He made a polite sound in the back of his throat – "say goodbye."

Coraline and the Other Wybie stood facing each other, wearing identical expressions, the mouth positioned somewhere between a smile and a frown. Nothing was said, at least not out loud. Then, all at once, Coraline's eyes began to sting, and her self control deteriorated. "Do you have to go?" she sobbed.

A despaired, forlorn expression overtook the Other Wybie's face, but eyeless and voiceless, he could not truly cry. They embraced, both knowing that this was real, this was happening, this was the last time they would ever see each other.

A gust of wind encircled them, and Coraline could feel the Other Wybie physically slipping away from her. And then she heard a voice. It was a soft, serene, timid voice, but it was also a voice filled with excitement and wonder. It was a childlike, almost feminine voice, but it was also the voice of someone who had seen and experienced many terrible things. It was a voice that said only one word before it was blown out of existence, and because it was unfamiliar, she knew who it belonged to.

It was the voice of the Other Wybie, and it said, "Coraline."

And then it was gone, and Coraline was left holding onto nothing, except the memories of a speechless boy who had only wanted, through every peril they'd faced, to say her name, and who had finally done so at the moment of his demise.

She fell to her knees and rested there for awhile. The sun had dipped over the horizon by this time, and the moon made her tears gleam like molten silver on her cheeks.

Eventually, Wybie approached her. When he spoke it was not about the deceased Other Wybie, or the Other Mother, or their recent adventure. He remarked to her, softly yet casually, "I wonder how long we've been gone."

Coraline dried her eyes with the sleeve of her raincoat and stood up. Looking down the rugged bluff, she managed to smile.

"I bet our parents are going to kill us."


	13. Dreams are dangerous

_A/N -- Well, here it is. I never thought I'd see the day, but this is the last chapter of The Forgotten._

_Maybe now would be a good time to reveal what I was always hoping to accomplish with this story. See, on opening night I fell in love with the Other Wybie straitaway. But when our last glimpse of him was clothes dangling from a flagpole, I found myself thinking, "What?! That's it?!" I thought that there had to be more to his story. I didn't think that it was a fitting way to bid him farewell. And out of those thoughts came what you now know as my OW-centric fanfictions: Stitches, The Sacrafice, and finally The Forgotten._

_The Forgotten was never a fanfiction meant to save him. It was a fanfiction meant to give him a better goodbye, the kind of goodbye he deserved._

_Oh, and one last thing: before you ask me what I'm going to do now that this is all over, I feel the need to tell you that it's not all over. I haven't explained everything. It's no coincidence that this was an Other Wybie story told from Coraline's perspective, but I haven't been able to explain everything I wanted to, and, well, one thing led to another..._

_Forgotten fans, look for _The Abandoned_, coming soon to a computer near you._

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Coraline stretched luxuriantly as she stepped out of her mother's Volkswagen. Her left arm rose, extending high above her head, but her right arm stayed where it was – it was bound in a sling and a brand-new lime green cast.

"Hey, Jonesy!" called Wybie ecstatically. He stood next to his motorbike, which was propped up against the wall of the Pink Palace. "Nice cast."

"I wouldn't need such a beautiful cast if you hadn't gone and broken my wrist, Wyy-booorn," Coraline retorted, smirking.

"Can I sign it?" he asked, fumbling in his top coat pocket for a marker.

She brandished her arm as she trotted up to him. "Knock yourself out."

The marker squeaked over the ridges in the plaster as Wybie scrawled in a clumsy block writing TO JONESY FROM WYBIE. Coraline admired the signature as he capped the marker and put it away. "You have no idea how _painful _this is…" she drawled dramatically.

"Well, why are you telling me?" replied Wybie. "After all, _I_ saved your life."

The cover story was that Coraline had nearly fallen down the well; she had snagged on to the edge but had been unable to pull herself up. Wybie had allegedly found her and assisted her in reaching the surface, but had broken her wrist in the process. Of course, they both knew that sooner or later, they would have to reveal the actual occurrences to Wybie's grandmother, but for the moment that could wait.

"Yeah, you're the greatest hero ever to walk the face of the Earth." Coraline rolled her eyes.

"We should celebrate my heroism," suggested Wybie. "Ask your mom if you can stay out here for a while."

Coraline hardly even turned around. "Mom!"

Coraline's mother was standing stiffly beside the Volkswagen, tracking the entire conversation. She pursed her lips, pondering the request. "Well…I guess it's all right. Twenty minutes, you hear? And then you come straight back. And if you break anything else, I swear to God I'll…"

"Thanks, Mom," laughed Coraline.

She and Wybie took off, sprinting across the grounds, whooping and hollering, never giving a thought to their final destination. They were blissfully happy, happy to be alive, happy to have pulled out of the dangers and back into their bright, ordinary lives. With a little luck, there would be no more calls to dark adventure, no more otherworldly loose ends to tie up. In these moments, they could be happy, regular children.

When they arrived at the old well, they stopped. They were puffing and panting, and it seemed a fitting place for a rest. The well's opening was like a blot of night on the ground.

"We should put the cover back on," said Coraline.

Wybie nodded, retrieved the circle of wooden planks, and dropped it atop the hold. But neither he nor Coraline could avert their eyes from the now-sealed portal. It felt like shutting the door on all that had occurred, and Coraline hoped that no matter what might happen in the future, she would always remember the Other Wybie – and all he'd done for her.

"I keep thinking we could have saved him," said Wybie, as if tapping into her thoughts. "We could have done just one thing differently, and then he'd still be…"

"No." Coraline spoke softly, but she surprised herself by speaking at all. "We did the right thing, I know we did. Thanks to us…" – she smiled despite the cold lump in her throat – "he'll never be the forgotten again."

_**THE END**_


End file.
